# The CLEAR Doors Act: What It Does

This bill creates a new rule to make it harder for former government employees to quietly lobby their old agencies. Specifically, it requires lobbyists who recently left government jobs to report their lobbying activities within 48 hours instead of waiting weeks or months like other lobbyists do. The idea is to shine a light on what's sometimes called the "revolving door"—when people leave government positions and immediately start working for private companies trying to influence those same agencies they just left.

Here's how it works in practice: If someone worked at the EPA for the past four years and then gets hired by a chemical company to lobby the EPA, they now have to file a special report within 48 hours of any meeting with their former agency. That report needs to include who they met with, what they discussed, and which company hired them. This is much faster than the normal lobbying reporting timeline, which allows lobbyists to wait until quarterly filings to disclose their activities. The bill also says that if someone starts lobbying before they've officially registered as a lobbyist, they must register within 48 hours of that first lobbying contact.

The bill also changes the definition of who counts as a "lobbyist" in one important way: if someone does lobbying work for a client they recently worked for in government—even if it's only a small part of their job—they now have to register and follow these rules. Previously, people could do some lobbying without registering if it made up less than 20 percent of their work. This exception no longer applies to these "revolving door" situations.

CLEAR Doors Act

O'Halleran, Tom

Closing Loopholes, Ending Anonymous Revolving Doors Act or the CLEAR Doors Act This act requires a lobbyist who engages in special lobbying activities to file a report on those activities within 48 hours with the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Special lobbying occurs when a lobbyist who was employed by an executive branch agency in the past four years engages in lobbying activity with an executive official of that agency.