Personal Finance

Wiki ▸ Avenues of Influence ▸ Personal Finance

Info

The OpenSecrets personal finance database contains information about agreements, assets, compensation, gifts, honoraria, income, liability, positions, transactions, and travel disclosed in the personal finance reports legislators are required to file by May 15th each year (links are the respective OpenSecrets schema). The Center for Responsive Politics obtained reports covering 2004 through 2009 for members of Congress from the Senate Office of Public Records and the Office of the Clerk of the House. CRP did not collect personal financial data for non-incumbent candidates for federal office; there are simply too many. For the executive branch, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics provided reports for the president, vice president, presidential Cabinet and other select officials. Supreme Court filings are provided by the Administrative Office of the US Courts. After electronically scanning the paper reports into digital images, the information was captured via data entry and verified. Further description of what can be found in PFD reports is available on the CRPs Disclosure Rules page.

Data

• Source : OpenSecrets Bulk Data
• Endpoint documentation: http://www.opensecrets.org/action/datadictionary/UserGuide.doc
• requires account?: Yes, MyOpenSecrets Account
• endpoint used in BFF scripts: NA
• Required Credits: http://www.opensecrets.org/MyOS/credit.php

Schema

Note: Personal Finance data is not currently incorporated into the Legislator Events timeline. When it is, the schema will be documented here.