TO: Interested Parties
AB 2546, if enacted, would establish mandatory electronic filing of political disclosure records, and require that the records be made available to the public on the Internet, thereby vastly improving public access to campaign finance data and lobbying expenditures.
FROM: Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation
DATE: May 14, 1996
RE: AB 2546/Speier: Electronic Filing of Political Disclosure RecordsAs sensible as this bill sounds, it has already suffered somewhat due to partisanship and personality conflicts in the Assembly. It is imperative that the people of California let state lawmakers know that this bill, and their votes, are being watched carefully, and that this bill represents a huge step forward in improving public access to political records. Another fact that may be of interest to the Legislature is that most states are moving toward electronic filing or have already implemented it, including Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, as well as the Federal Elections Commission.
The next big hurdle for AB 2546 is tomorrow, May 15, when the bill is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Appropriations Committee (along with over 100 other bills!). Below is a list of committee members, along with their fax numbers. Position letters can be faxed directly to the committee chair and vice chair. Faxes to committee members from constituents are also very effective.
MEMBER FROM... FAX (916) Charles Poochigian (Chair) (R)
Valerie Brown (Vice-Chair) (D)
Dick Ackerman (R)
Fred Aguiar (R)
Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D)
Steve Baldwin (R)
Tom Bordonaro (R)
Marilyn Brewer (R)
John Burton (D)
Sal Cannella (D)
Barbara Friedman (D)
Martin Gallegos (D)
George House (R)
Diane Martinez (D)
Jim Morrissey (R)
Bill Morrow (R)
Keith Olberg (R)
Nao Takasugi (R)
Bruce Thompson (R)
Antonio Villaraigosa (D)
Tom Woods (R)
Fresno
Sonoma
Fullerton
Chino
Los Angeles
El Cajon
Paso Robles
Newport Beach
San Francisco
Ceres
North Hollywood
Baldwin Park
Hughson
Monterey Park
Santa Ana
Oceanside
Victorville
Oxnard
Fallbrook
Los Angeles
Shasta
322-4040
322-0674
327-2234
445-0385
323-9640
323-8470
324-5510
324-3657
324-4899
445-8849
323-8459
327-9696
445-7344
324-1393
327-1783
323-8318
323-7467
324-6869
447-4457
445-0764
448-6040
UPDATE ON AMENDMENTS:
Last week all the parties involved in this legislation met twice to work out amendments to deal with the software issue. A recap: the lone opponent on the bill, Statecraft (a campaign finance software vendor), was claiming that the free software provision in AB 2546 would "put them out of business". This argument met with sympathetic ears, particularly among the Assembly Republican Caucus, who took a position to oppose the bill unless the free software provision was amended out.
All parties involved in the legislation were in agreement that campaigns should be allowed to continue to use whatever software they were currently using, as long as the software vendor followed the standard filing format that the Secretary of State would determine. The question that still remained was whether the Secretary of State, in addition to issuing a standard filing format, should also make free software available to the public. This is the point on which there was much disagreement.
At the beginning of the week, the parties involved in the bill were considering three options, none of them very attractive:
By the end of the week, we developed a fourth option:
- Have the Secretary of State write a program in-house;
- Have the Secretary of State contract out for the program;
- Rely on the private market to develop and sell the software to filers.
The California Voter Foundation, along with Jim Warren and David Jefferson of Digital Equipment Corporation, plan to facilitate a shareware programming effort that we hope will make this fourth option a reality. Any programmers who would like to participate in this effort are invited to come forward - if we can start developing a list of volunteers now it will show the Legislature that this voluntary effort will work!
- Rely on the private market to develop filing software that will be made available as freeware or shareware.
The bill was amended to require the Secretary of State to certify at least one program is available to filers for $99 or less by a certain date (probably six months after the filing format is issued) or else the whole electronic filing program will be scrapped. It's a dramatic solution, but one that all advocates feel confident will work. The opponent of the bill, Cheryl White, owner of Statecraft, stated in the final meeting last week that this amendment would remove her opposition to the bill; she has not yet stated that she is now in support of AB 2546, although she has said that she supports electronic filing in general.
I think it's fascinating that we are crafting legislation premised on the assumption that the private sector will voluntarily help meet the mandate of the legislation, but this approach has been shown to work in the past. In 1993, AB 1624/Bowen, which required all of the Legislature's bill information to be made available on the Internet, faced a similar fate when folks in the Capitol claimed the bill would require a million dollars worth of programming to create the online resource. Jim Warren and Co. came forward with software programs that would do the job and be made available for free, thereby quashing the need to place a huge appropriation for software in the bill, which would in effect have killed the bill.
It is imperative that citizens, companies and organizations who are interested in this legislation share their thoughts on this bill with their state representatives as soon as possible; I believe the only way AB 2546 will pass is if the legislators feel that they can't NOT vote for it; that a vote against this bill means a vote against progress and public sentiment.
Kim Alexander, Executive Director, California Voter Foundation cvf@netcom.com 916/325-2120
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