As of midnight last night, candidates for federal office were to have filed their campaign finance disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission. These reports contain crucial information that lets voters know which special interests, big-money lobbyists or out-of-state donors may be funding a candidate’s campaign. The reports are supposed to be public, but if you try to find Senate candidates’ reports today, you will be out of luck. Why? Because the Senate has exempted itself from filing directly with the FEC, instead using the Secretary of the Senate as an intermediary. And instead of filing their reports electronically, like House candidates and presidential candidates have been doing for years, Senators and Senate candidates mail or hand-deliver paper printouts of their electronically generated reports.

After receiving the reports, the Secretary of the Senate must scan, page by painstaking page, thousands of pages of campaign finance reports before transmitting them to the FEC. It may be days or weeks before the FEC receives the reports—longer for the ones that are mailed rather than hand delivered, as the mailed reports don’t even arrive at the Secretary of the Senate’s office until they have been processed off site.

But wait, there’s more. After it receives the scanned documents, the FEC must then spend about $450,000 in taxpayer dollars and untold hours having the records typed in, line-by-line, to the FEC’s databases. It will take at least three weeks before the information is publicly available—longer in the middle of a busy election season. The process isn’t just inefficient. It denies citizens timely access to information that can help shape and inform their opinions about their candidates and elected officials.

Senator Tester and Cochran have repeatedly introduced legislation to streamline the process and make electronic filing mandatory. This Congress, a bipartisan group of 30 senators have cosponsored S. 375, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, with many others voicing support for the measure.

Despite its overwhelming support, the bill has not become law because some in the Senate have chosen to make it a political pawn. That is why we urge every Senator who supports transparency and government efficiency, as well as every one who opposes government waste, to cosponsor the bill. Overwhelming, demonstrated support may be the best chance this common sense piece of legislation to pass.

The Sunlight Foundation's sister organization, the Sunlight Network, is organizing Citizen Advocacy Day, an exciting opportunity for citizens to let their members of Congress know how important a transparent government is to them. The event will take place May 6, the day after what is shaping up to be an eventful, fun and informative TransparencyCamp.

Citizen advocates will have a chance to talk to key policy staff for their Members of Congress about important transparency issues, like smarter open data through the DATA Act, making sure the Senate keeps up the with the times by mandating electronic filing of campaign finance reports and getting more disclosure about lobbying and the financial interests of members of Congress and their staff.

Sunlight will brief citizen advocates (and feed them breakfast!) the morning of the Advocacy Day to arm them with talking points about key transparency related priorities.

Sunlight advocates on ways to improve transparency of government information but we can’t do it alone. Become a Citizen Advocate and help shine a light on our government.

President Obama's 2014 budget includes a Sunlight priority that won't erase the deficit, but will streamline the way that important campaign finance information becomes public. Last year, we noted that Obama had included a provision in his FY13 budget proposal that would require Senate Campaign Committees to file their campaign finance reports electronically and it appears that he's pushing the idea again this year.

Specific language can be found in a document outlining spending for "Other Independent Agencies." It is very similar to the provisions included in the FY13 request and reads:

The Budget proposes that Senate Campaign Committees be required to file campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission, which is consistent with the reporting requirements for all other Federal political committees. This measure will save at least $430,000 annually by reducing costs for manual data entry and will also promote transparency by expediting the process by which the reports are made available to the public.

The Senate has been hesitant to take this step into the 21st century, although the idea has a champion in Senator Jon Tester who introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act in the 112th Congress and again earlier this year.

Requiring the Senate to file their campaign finance reports electronically with the FEC is a simple and cost effective way to increase transparency and efficiency. Hopefully this provision will make its way into whatever budget plan successfully passes Congress.

Today, Senator Tester announced that once again he has introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, (not yet online) a bill that would bring the Senate into the 21^st Century by requiring senators and Senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission.

The current filing system in place in the Senate would laughable if it weren’t so destructive to disclosure.  Senate candidates file their quarterly campaign finance reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who prints them out on reams of paper to be delivered to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then inputs the information contained in those reports into its computer databases. Transparency delayed is transparency denied. The Senate system is anathema to anyone who supports meaningful disclosure.

House candidates and presidential candidates, by contrast, have been electronically filing their campaign finance reports for over a decade—streamlining the process and saving taxpayer money. It is estimated that the duplicative paper filing system in place in the Senate costs up to a half a million dollars annually.

Versions of the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act have been introduced with significant bipartisan support in multiple prior congresses. No Senator that we know of has ever publicly opposed the legislation. The only reason the bill is not law is because it has been used for partisan political squabbles.  As the Senate struggles with massive challenges facing the country, from sequestration to guns to immigration, perhaps this year Senators can finally agree to enact a bill that no one can disagree with.

Last week, the Delaware legislature sent an interesting bill to Governor Jack Merkell: SB 185, a short, targeted piece of legislation that, if signed into law, will bring Delaware’s lobbying disclosure into the 21st century.

With the passage of SB 185, online disclosure will be the default for all lobbying reports and lobbyist registration. (Paper filing will only be acceptable in the (hopefully) rare event that the electronic filing system is offline.) Further, SB 185 requires that lobbyists “disclose the bill, resolution, or regulation on which they are lobbying...within five business days of contact with a relevant public official” -- which, while not real time reporting, is pretty darn close and puts SB 185 on par with the disclosure deadlines proposed in a federal bill Sunlight supports: the Lobbying Disclosure Enhancement Act, introduced last June.

Of course, these electronic requirements would mean nothing if they remained out of the public’s reach. That’s why one of SB 185’s most important proposals is to charge the Public Integrity Commission -- the agency that administers many of Delaware's ethics and disclosure laws and receives these filings -- with making these reports available online “in a manner in which they can be easily reviewed by bill, resolution, regulation, lobbyist or employer, and that regular updates be distributed to members of the General Assembly.”

These are solid -- but not sweeping -- reforms. Although it’s critical that Delaware -- and all state governments -- require electronic filing and public-facing databases of influence data (updated in real time), when it comes to the transparency of lobbying records and practices, Delaware still has a ways to go. Earlier this year, the state received an “F” in Lobbying Disclosure from the State Integrity Investigation, which issued report cards to all 50 states, grading them based on a quantitative analysis of anti-corruption and pro-accountability laws and measures. Delaware’s “F” earned it the rank of fourth worst in the nation on lobbying disclosure and dragged down its overall score to a C-. Although lawmakers cited the bill (and Governor Markell endorsed it) as part of their effort to improve the state’s score, SB 185 really only improves on the part of lobbying disclosure that Delaware was already doing well: general public access to disclosed information. Prior to SB 185, Delaware was publishing its lobbying reports online for free, but it was not making these documents available in a searchable database (nor was it releasing this info in as timely a manner as possible). SB 185 will change that.

What the bill won’t vastly change is what information lobbyists need to disclose. SB 185 could be strengthened by requiring that the names of the specific officials or lawmakers lobbied are disclosed or if it created provisions for enforcement mechanisms, such as independent audits of disclosure records.¹ But just because 185 could be better doesn't mean that it isn’t worth the Governor’s signature: Policy, like technology, is iterative, and what SB 185 does to demonstrate Delaware’s willingness to use technology to support greater public monitoring can’t be underrated. Plus, SB 185 does require some new information be released: If made law, lobbyists will newly have to identify the specific bill, resolution or regulation they’re working on, a valuable addition to the lobbying information currently available to Delawareans.

SB 185 is an excellent example of a small but important step that all state legislatures should make to solidify public access to influence data, and it provides a great platform for Delaware to build on in its efforts to improve the quality and depth of its transparency laws. Let’s hope they do.

Full bill text available here.

¹ More info on Sunlight’s Lobbying Reform platform.

In what could be a record for shortest congressional hearing, the Senate Rules Committee today discussed S. 219, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act. At the thirty minute hearing, Senators Schumer, Alexander and Tester discussed their support for the bill, which would require Senate candidates to file their campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission, eliminating the duplicative, time consuming and wasteful current filing process. Senator Udall announced he would join the bill as a cosponsor, and two witnesses, Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson and Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, echoed their support for this noncontroversial legislation, noting that not only would it save the FEC over $400,000 annually, but it would free up resources for the Secretary of the Senate to implement the STOCK Act. Most importantly, requiring electronic filing of campaign finance reports would ensure that vital information about campaigns’ receipts and expenditures would be available to the public before they go to the polls.

The bill is so straightforward the Senators didn’t even have any questions for the witnesses. So will it pass? Unfortunately, the deciding factor will be Mitch McConnell. For reasons he has never adequately explained, he has been behind the secret holds and poison pill amendments that have blocked this bill for years. In pure Washington-speak, he claims to support the bill without denying that he has blocked it. He has had other senators, included Pat Roberts and John Ensign, do his dirty work for him, offering amendments that had nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with killing the bill. But when we came across evidence that before Ensign offered it, his poison pill amendment in was actually a McConnell amendment, we knew who the culprit was. Don’t just take our word for it. Even Sen. Ensign admitted to working with McConnell on the strategy that killed a prior version of the bill.

Maybe this is the year McConnell will finally give up the fight, let this simple bill pass by Unanimous Consent, and spend his energies on true controversies. Maybe.

McConnell Amendment to E-File

Where else but the United States Senate would digital documents containing vital public information be printed, scanned, emailed, printed again and re-keyed into computers before they could be searched, sorted and analyzed by the public? Because the Senate has exempted itself from the electronic filing requirements that apply to all other political committees, the absurd process is repeated multiple times a year by every candidate vying for a Senate seat.

Tomorrow, the Senate Rules Committee will hold a hearing on S. 219, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, a bill designed to bring the Senate into the 21st Century by requiring Senate candidates to file their campaign finance disclosure reports with the FEC, as House candidates, presidential candidates and PACs have been doing for years. Sunlight submitted testimony urging senators to support the bill. We also joined a coalition urging quick passage of this bipartisan legislation.

There is nothing controversial about the bill. No one has publicly opposed it on its merits. Possibly the most notable feature of the legislation is that a hearing is necessary at all. This bill should have been enacted a decade ago.

The primary culprit behind the failure to enact this bill is Senator Mitch McConnell. For reasons that only he could explain (although he never has) he has blocked passage of this bill by subjecting it to secret holds and poison pill amendments. This is the same Mitch McConnell who once asked, “Why would a little disclosure [of money in politics] be better than a lot of disclosure?"

We are left to assume that McConnell only supports a lot of disclosure when he thinks it advantages him or his party. Otherwise, he will do everything in his power to deny the public timely access to information that is critical to a functioning democracy.

The current process by which Senate candidates file their campaign finance reports wastes time and money, not to mention reams of paper. It is particularly troublesome in the days before an election, when there is more information filed and when delays may mean the public must go to the polls without access to complete information about candidates’ finances.

We hope the days of political gamesmanship surrounding this simple bill are over. It is past time for the Senate to adopt mandatory electronic filing of campaign finance reports.

Testimony of Ellen Miller in Support of S. 219

The day of gadget envy reckoning is upon us as Apple unveils their latest iPad and it seems only natural that the Sunlight Foundation watch this media frenzy in regards to our policy proposals. One particularly confounding (and floundering) situation is that the Senate refuses to use the internet and file their campaign finance reports electronically, though a few Senate offices nobly do.

The current process of filing goes something like this: a senator's campaign staff fills out campaign financial disclosure forms as required every quarter, submits those forms to the Secretary of the Senate who prints them out and sends it over to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then takes this pile of paper and pays an army of data-entry folks to put those forms back into electronic format and then the FEC posts it online. We might be laughing at this scene set to Yakety Sax if it weren't costing taxpayers an estimated $430,000 every single year! This is stupid.

We tried appealing to their environmental concerns. We tried appealing to their government efficiency concerns. We tried appealing to their debt concerns. Turns out those concerns aren't so strong. Now, we appeal to their gadget envy concerns.

The iPad Proposal:

• Most recently cited cost of not filing electronically: $430,000
• Cost of a brand new 16 gb iPad with WiFi and AppleCare Warranty with taxes: $612.68
• Number of iPads that could be purchased with savings: 701
• Every Senate office gets 7 iPads and the extra goes to the Secretary of the Senate.

Maybe this will bait McConnell out from his cave of baffling obstruction?

Note: This proposal is tongue-in-cheek and we think it's much better for senators to just use their existing computers to file, like the House has been doing for years. Maybe they could put the money they would save towards funding other e-government programs?!

Senators Tester and Cochran, champions of common sense legislation that would require senators and senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports, yesterday offered a version of their bill as an amendment to the STOCK Act. Sunlight applauds their effort and wrote a letter to all senators urging them to support the amendment.

Sunlight has long supported the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, a much needed and long overdue remedy to the absurd system in place in the Senate. Currently, senate candidates file their quarterly campaign finance reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who then prints them out on reams of paper and delivers them to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then inputs the information contained in those reports into its computer databases. The archaic and costly process delays public access to information about who is funding Senate campaigns, sometimes until after the election takes place.

By contrast, senators’ counterparts in the House, as well as presidential candidates and PACs, have, for years, electronically filed their campaign finance reports directly with the FEC, avoiding the wasteful, duplicative and opaque senate system.

Versions of this Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act have been introduced with significant bipartisan support in multiple prior congresses. No Senator that we know of has ever publicly opposed the legislation. Yet it has not been enacted because it has been the victim of politics. Senator Mitch McConnell has repeatedly demanded that a vote on the electronic filing bill be linked to a vote on unrelated proposal that would, if enacted, actually decrease transparency by posing burdens on groups filing ethics complaints against any sitting senator.

By offering the electronic filing bill as an amendment to the STOCK Act, there is a real opportunity to make this piece of legislation law. We hope it comes up for a vote and that every senator supports it. There is no reason not to.

Letter to the Senate on Electornic Filing Amendment 2012-02-01-1