The Government Accountability Office estimates in a new report that about 6 percent of disclosure reports filed with Congress last year under the Lobbying Disclosure Act incorrectly reported income or expenses related to lobbying activity.

The GAO randomly audited 100 of 40,169 lobbying disclosure reports filed in the first 9 months of 2008 and found that 14 percent of the lobbyists or lobbying firms had incorrectly reported too much or too little income related to lobbying activity, or could not explain why their internal company documents contradicted their lobbying reports sent to Congress. Based on that figure, the GAO estimated that a total of 6 percent of reports had "erroneous" income information.

The report also said that in Dec. 2008 the Secretary of the Senate referred 242 LDA non-compliance cases to the U.S. Attorney's Office covering the mid-2007 reporting period. The U.S. Attorney's Office acted on 190 of those cases and compliance letters were sent on Jan. 9, 2009. No further information was provided.

The GAO said as of April 2009 the U.S. Attorney has created an electronic method of keeping track of violations of the lobbying law and it has assigned more staff to enforcement of the lobbying rules.

The GAO findings were first reported today in BNA's Money & Politics Report.

                                                                                                                    --Bara Vaida