Who pays to lobby in Helena.

Sources: Commissioner of Political Practices, Principal and Lobbyist Online Reporting System: Search Registry (View All Lobbyists, View All Principals, 2025-2026); Commissioner of Political Practices, LPORS Download Reports: Principal L-5 Details Report, 2025-2026, by report type; Commissioner of Political Practices, Legislative Session and Lobbying page (2025-2026 registered principals and lobbyists list, updated April 2, 2025); Commissioner of Political Practices, Lobbying Financial Report Guide (February 2023); Commissioner of Political Practices, digitized hard-copy lobbying reports, 2009-present (Tableau).

How to read this

Montana lobbyists who are paid $2,900 or more (the figure in the agency's 2023 guide; the online system now says $3,000) to lobby the Legislature must be licensed by the Commissioner of Political Practices, and the principals who pay them must register and file L-5 lobbying financial reports. In a session year a principal files a report for January, monthly reports for February and March if it spent $5,000 or more in the month, a Post Session report, and a Session Year End report for the rest of the year; after the session a monthly report is due for any month with $5,000 or more in spending. Each L-5 lists payments to lobbyists (salaries, fees, allowances, rewards and contingency fees), payments to other people hired to lobby, and expenses, and gives a total. The table adds each principal's report totals from Jan. 1, 2025 on, as the Commissioner's Principal L-5 Details downloads list them (one entry per report, amended reports as amended). Payments and expenses are shown separately in the data file. Reports covering calendar 2024 (Non Session Year End), filed in early 2025, are kept apart and never added in. Montana does not require electronic filing; reports filed on paper are posted on a separate scanned-records site and may be missing from these downloads (see gaps). The 2026 report for months after September is not yet due. Being a lobbyist or principal, or paying for lobbying, is lawful and public; these records do not show that any official acted because of it.

What is not here yet

• Paper-filed L-5 reports: Montana does not require electronic filing, and reports filed on paper, by email or by fax are posted only on the Commissioner's scanned hard-copy site (a Tableau dashboard). That site was not read, so a principal that filed on paper may show less here than it reported. 80 principal entries in the online downloads say no reports have been filed.
• The table ranks principals, not lobbyists. Montana's L-5 reports are filed by principals; what each lobbyist received from each principal is itemized only inside individual reports, which were not pulled one by one.
• Some principals file both a December monthly report and a Session Year End report; the figures are added as filed and were not checked line by line for overlap.
• The LPORS listing shows no license issue date for some registered lobbyists; why (pending, unpaid or paper-filed licenses) was not checked.
• The Commissioner's registered principal and lobbyist spreadsheet for 2025-2026 was last updated April 2, 2025 and was saved for reference only; counts come from the live LPORS listing.
• A few principal names in the downloads run into their addresses when converted to text; they were matched to the registry name where possible, and none of them is in the top 20.
• The downloads also list reports under 'City of Bozeman (do not use)', an account the agency marks 'do not use' and that is not on the 2025-2026 registry: 4 report entries totaling $16,500.00. They are not added to any principal or count here; whether they duplicate reports on the registered account was not checked.

Gaps in the lobbying records as of the date checked.