PA committee list has duplicate committees

[NateV]

When I ask for all of the committees in the PA legislature, I get a
number of duplicates. For example, the searching for all pa lower
house committees returns JSON that includes six different
appropriations committees. Am I doing something wrong in my query, or
is the data incorrect?

Here's two of the appropriations committee listings I get.

{"level":"state","committee":"Appropriations","chamber":"lower","country":"us","updated_at":"2011-12-03
13:56:30","created_at":"2010-11-29
00:00:00","parent_id":"PAC000182","state":"pa","subcommittee":"Subcommittee
on Education","id":"PAC000182"},

{"level":"state","chamber":"lower","committee":"Appropriations","country":"us","updated_at":"2011-12-03
13:56:29","created_at":"2010-11-29
00:00:00","parent_id":null,"state":"pa","subcommittee":null,"id":"PAC000008","votesmart_id":"9741"}

It looks like they are identifying different parents and
subcommittees. What's going on?

Thanks for your help,
-Nate

[Remy DeCausemaker]

Nate,

At a quick glance, there are a few differences:

* They were updated at different times
* The subcomittee changed
* The order of the results is slightly different
* A parent_id was added
* the votesmart_id was removed
* id changed

{"level":"state", "committee":"Appropriations","chamber":"lower",
"country":"us", "updated_at":"2011-12-03 13:56:30",
"created_at":"2010-11-29 00:00:00", "parent_id":"PAC000182",
"state":"pa", "subcommittee":"Subcommittee on Education",
"id":"PAC000182"},

{"level":"state", "chamber":"lower", "committee":"Appropriations",
"country":"us", "updated_at":"2011-12-03 13:56:29",
"created_at":"2010-11-29 00:00:00", "parent_id":null, "state":"pa",
"subcommittee":null, "id":"PAC000008", "votesmart_id":"9741"}

Here's a diff:

2d1
< "committee":"Appropriations",
3a3
> "committee":"Appropriations",
5c5

< "updated_at":"2011-12-03 13:56:30",

---

> "updated_at":"2011-12-03 13:56:29",

7c7
< "parent_id":"PAC000182",
---
> "parent_id":null,
9,10c9,11

< "subcommittee":"Subcommittee on Education",
< "id":"PAC000182"},

---

> "subcommittee":null,
> "id":"PAC000008",
> "votesmart_id":"9741"}

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--
Remy DeCausemaker
Research Associate
Lab for Technological Literacy
http://foss.rit.edu

Rochester Institute of Technology
Center for Student Innovation
159 Lomb Memorial Drive
Building 87-1680
Rochester, NY 14623

[James Turk]

If you are seeing multiple with the same committee name, look at
subcommittee, one will be null (the top level committee) and the
others will be filled out, if there are duplicates for which
(committee, subcommittee) isn't unique that is a legitimate issue and
can be reported at https://github.com/sunlightlabs/openstates/issues

[NateV]

Thanks for your replies. This is helpful.

So the json is set up so that there should be multiple records for a
particular committee if that committee has multiple subcommittees?

On Dec 4, 12:57 am, James Turk <james.p.t...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If you are seeing multiple with the same committee name, look at
> subcommittee, one will be null (the top level committee) and the
> others will be filled out, if there are duplicates for which
> (committee, subcommittee) isn't unique that is a legitimate issue and

> can be reported athttps://github.com/sunlightlabs/openstates/issues