9 Residents want more financial information
CITY HALL Finding out how your favorite candidate is financing a run for office is about to get a whole lot easier.
City Clerk Maria Stewart, Santa Monica’s top elections official, said she is close to purchasing new computer software that will allow her staff to more efficiently process campaign disclosure statements and allow users to conduct searches for specific contributions or expenditures and then transfer that information onto a spreadsheet, something which the current system does not allow.
The software is expected to save time, money and paper, while enabling voters to better participate in the democratic process.
NetFile, based in Mariposa, Calif., is the vendor of choice and is currently serving or in the process of contracting with the cities of San Diego, San Jose, Anaheim, Santa Clara, Berkley, Sacramento and San Francisco.
The decision to look at more user-friendly software was sparked by a City Council discussion in May of this year in which elected officials expressed concern about the ability of residents or candidates to access information off of the City Clerk’s Web site.
The issue also came up in May at a community meeting on how to improve the city’s electoral process. During that meeting, residents said they felt democracy is alive and well in Santa Monica, however, they were worried that special interest groups continue to have a greater impact on elections than in previous years, raising concerns that elected officials are being persuaded by big money, no longer owing their allegiance to the public that elected them.
Because of that, residents felt they should have greater access to campaign finance information so that they could keep an eye on candidates and the committees working for and against them. Some even called for the public financing of campaigns and the establishment of a non-profit to monitor expenditures and contributions.
Campaign disclosures have been posted to the City Clerk’s Web site and made available electronically for public access since 2001, Stewart said. When the filings are received in the clerk’s office, the home address and phone number of the filer and of filer and the contributor are manually redacted from the forms and then the documents are scanned and uploaded to the Internet within 24 hours.
To accomplish that takes a considerable amount of time and effort, especially during campaign season, when many forms are turned in at the last minute, said Denise Anderson-Warren, deputy city clerk.
“It definitely takes a lot of time,” Anderson-Warren said. “There’s quite a bit of work involved.”
The currently scanned documents are in “.pdf” images only and are not easily searchable. The documents are available to the public to view online, but they are not stored in a database which allows for queries or searches of the data.
Stewart and her staff felt NetFile offered the best product at the best price, given that it is used by many other cities and is approved by the Secretary of State’s Office.
NetFile, which is the preeminent vender and has a hand in shaping the current state electronic filing system, is expected to charge City Hall $10,000 per year. The cost includes training, upgrades, maintenance, any updates mandated by law, as well as instant notification that filings have been received and a letter generation system in case staff needs to remind someone that they need to amend their filing, are later or need to pay a fine.
The City Clerk’s Office is looking to have the system up and running by campaign disclosures due on Jan. 31, 2008.
The City Council may want to consider in the future whether or not to make electronic filing mandatory for certain campaign committees. Those statements not submitted electronically will have information redacted and then be scanned manually and loaded onto the Internet. Those filings will not be searchable and a disclaimer will appear on the Web page that not all information is searchable.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 18, 2007. Read the original PDF.