Nathan Story Blog

Conflict of Interest Law Disclosures

Download Request
View the Database

The Request

I requested from the State Ethics Commission all conflict of interest law disclosures filed with the commission from 2012 to present.

Oddly, the commission lists the disclosures on its website, but you have to ask them if you want to view one. I asked for all of them 😆.

The Database

I added the disclosures (6660 PDF files!) to the sfi.statereference.com database.

I used Amazon Textract to extract fields from the documents: specifically, the name of the filer, the agency they work at, etc. The technology is impressive, but the results weren't great. I'm going to circle back eventually and find a better way to do this.

A random example of something neat you can do. This search shows Massachusetts politicians and officials who worked with AIPAC. I'm not surprised to see recently indicted Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins on that list!