EV cities, counties will have to post campaign reports on-line
May 13th, 2008, 11:35 am · 1 Comment · posted by Le Templar
Sen. Linda Gray
Arizona journalists frequently criticize state lawmakers for failing to respect the public’s right to know by passing laws that undermine the state open records law and enable government agencies to hide information.
So it’s only fair that the Legislature receive some praise today for forcing more agencies to provide more access to critically relevant election information – campaign finance reports.
On Tuesday, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed into law Senate Bill 1024, which requires the secretary of state, counties with more than 100,000 people and most cities and towns to post campaign finance reports on that government’s official Web site. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Linda Gray, R-Phoenix, shouldn’t impose any burdens on Secretary of State Jan Brewer or Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, as their agencies already make campaign reports available on the Internet. The secretary of state’s site has improved dramatically in the past two years after undergoing some major upgrades to make it more compatible with reporting requirements for the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.
Maricopa County just posts .pdf versions of the original finance reports on paper. This forces everyone to hunt through each candidate’s reports and makes it impossible to search for information by donors or expenses. But still, it’s better than having to drive to downtown Phoenix every time you want to research a candidate or a particular race.
Now, Pinal County and East Valley cities will have to start posting the same information online once the law goes into effect later this year. Hopefully, they will adopt a system more like the secretary of state’s, which requires candidates to file electronically instead of on paper. That approach is far more useful to just about anyone interested in how much money candidates are raising and who is contributing to them.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Hooray! Not only for easy access by the press for these campaign financing reports, but by private everyday citizens as well. Ignorant but hostile online posters affiliated with the Scott Smith for Mayor campaign were assertively spewing out many untruths, even figures, claimed to be from campaign finance records of opposing mayoral candidate Griswold, and some citizen finally on his own posted copies of the actual reports that he had obtained to disprove their lies and deter or prevent more of the same. Now with this legislation that won’t be necessary, since reports will be able to be accessed by Mesa’s official website.