Lobbying firms hoping for an uptick in spending by their clients had a disappointing first three months this year, an analysis by OpenSecrets.org shows: It was the worst first quarter in the last four years, continuing the downward slide of K Street spending.

Recently filed lobbying disclosure reports show that a total of $811.8 million was spent on federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2014, a decline of 2 percent from the first quarter of 2013 when $827.6 million was spent. It’s an even more dramatic decline — down 6.7 percent — from the $866.3 million spent in the first quarter of 2012, the same point in the last Congress. The decline has been continuing since 2010, when the first-quarter tally hit a peak of $955.6 million.

The $811.8 million spent so far this year is also a decline from the fourth quarter of 2013, when $826.9 million was spent on federal lobbying.

The amount that various interests ante up for an active Washington presence has been in a downturn for years now . The high water mark on an annual basis was 2010, when filings showed $3.55 billion was spent at the federal level, and it has dropped ever since. In 2013, $3.21 billion was spent, the third straight year of smaller outlays.

Although it is still early to say with much certainty if 2014 overall will be another data point on the same trend line, the evidence so far hints at that outcome. In each of the last four years, outlays in the first quarter were the high point compared with the quarters that followed.

Another metric used to measure K Street’s health is the number of active registered lobbyists. As with spending, there’s been a steady decline over time, from a high point of 14,836 registered lobbyists in 2007 to just 12,341 last year.

And, again mirroring spending totals, the number of lobbyists active in 2014’s first quarter — 9,927 — was less than in the first three months of any of the previous four years. The comparable figure in 2013 was 10,748. In 2010, there were 11,494 lobbyists active in that same period, federal lobbying reports show.

The top five lobbying firms from the final quarter of 2013 stayed on top in this most recent quarter — Patton Boggs LLP, Akin Gump, Podesta Group, Van Scoyoc and Brownstein, Hyatt — but only Brownstein Hyatt reported having earned more in the first three months of this year than the last three months of last year.

Patton Boggs, which has faced financial troubles and is in the midst of merger talks, tops the list of firms so far in 2014, having earned $9.3 million in the first quarter. This time last year, the firm reported bringing in $10.1 million in the first quarter, and more than $12 million in the first quarter of the previous two years.

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And that story seemed to be true across the board. Of the 3,021 firms reporting having been paid for lobbying so far this year, only 562 of them reported making more than they did during the same time period last year.

FTI Government Affairs, which took over the former C2 Group‘s lobbying operations last year, saw the biggest increase in its revenue over the same period last year. FTI reported earning $1.7 million in lobbying fees in the first quarter — significantly more than its $250,000 in the first quarter of last year, but less than the $2 million C2 reported in the first quarter of 2012.

Monte Ward, a registered lobbyist and the president of the Association of Government Relations Professionals, said he was not surprised to hear that numbers for the industry are once again down.

“I still don’t think the economy has turned around enough for people, we’re still affected by that,” he said.

But Ward also noted that to a degree, the slide in the number of lobbyists and money spent hiring them may be due to a mismatch between the Lobbying Disclosure Act reporting requirements and the fact that the actual job of lobbying has continued to evolve. Ward said his group — which used to be called the American League of Lobbyists — would like to see reform of the LDA rules.

“The LDA is not really measuring who is lobbying anymore,” Ward said. “If we had a true representation of of lobbying, whether it was grassroots work or whatever it may be, we might be seeing a little bit better numbers.”

Ward also said that President Obama’s refusal of lobbyists’ contributions as a candidate and his administration’s policy of not naming lobbyists to serve in the White House or in other government slots (though there have been some exceptions) have continued to push people away from registering if they don’t have to.

Still, the policies have been in place for five years, making it harder to see Obama as the cause of a shrinkage that deepens each year.

“This is probably the floor of the decline,” Ward predicted, perhaps optimistically.