In the credit-where-credit-is-due category, new Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis last week made it infinitely easier to find out which corporation, organized labor group or industry trade association has both a lobbyist at the State House and a lawmaker on its payroll.

Mollis’ predecessor, Matt Brown, launched the online filing of lobbyist expense reports. But the curious had to click and open the link to each one of several hundred filings to learn who did — or did not — file the annual reports. Entities employing lobbyists must report by Jan. 15 each year any fees, commissions, salaries and the like they paid to a state legislator.

If you didn’t already know, for example, that Nestor Automated Systems paid legal fees of $5,000 in 2005 and $7,500 last year to Rep. Robert Flaherty, D-Warwick, you wouldn’t know unless you stumbled upon it or dutifully worked your way through every other filing from A to N.

In his second week in office, Mollis asked his staff if there was a way to pierce this fog. Within days, public information staffer Stacy DiCola and information technology staffer Christopher Fowler came up with a solution.

By the time his third week began, they had batched all of the filings under a new heading: reports. A click produced a menu of selections that included a link to a list of every interest group that had, in fact, filed one of these annual disclosure statements, when it was filed, and whether it reflected any payments to lawmakers.

Under the name Nestor, for example, it says: filed 01-12-2007 with 1 expense(s). Bingo. Under MetLife Auto & Home: 2 expenses. Bingo again. Worth opening. Liquor distributor McLaughlin & Moran: 0 expense(s). No need to open.

Asked to comment last week on some of the better known relationships between lawmakers and some of the big gambling and organized labor groups that went unreported, Mollis said the law appears to have “loopholes where we are not getting the information this legislation was intended to get.” He said he would try to meet soon with the original sponsors of the 2004 disclosure law and the past and current directors of the citizens advocacy group Common Cause to see if the law is accomplishing its intent.

FYI: Harrah’s Entertainment, Beacon Mutual and the United Way of Rhode Island were among those that filed late. Only the United Way had anything to report: the $59,190 salary it pays Sen. Beatrice Lanzi, D-Cranston, to serve as its director of labor community services.

Katherine Gregg, Scott Mayerowitz, Elizabeth Gudrais and Jennifer D. Jordan