Arkansas voters and researchers would no longer be forced to leaf through stacks of paper reports to learn who's bankrolling candidates for the state's highest-profile offices, under legislation introduced Monday.
House Bill 1233 would require statewide and district candidates to file their campaign finance reports into computerized databases, joining Arkansas with at least 40 other states that no longer accept paper forms.
The goal, said lead sponsor Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, is "to achieve transparency ... we want better access to the information" of how candidates fund their campaigns.
If adopted, the new law should save money, Della Rosa said, because the secretary of state's office already has a computerized database in place. Staff would no longer have to handle and scan in thousands of pages of paper filings.
"It will be a small savings, but there should be some savings," she said.
The legislation affects only candidates who file campaign finance disclosure reports with the secretary of state's office, which includes candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, legislators, and circuit and higher court judgeships.
Another of the bill's sponsors, House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, said he has chosen to submit his campaign finance reports into the state's electronic database for five years. Della Rosa has "made a compelling case for improving transparency and efficiency" with the measure, he said.
Two years ago, Rep. Warwick Sabin, D-Little Rock, proposed similar legislation but couldn't garner much support.
"I'm really encouraged by this effort," Sabin said. "I think there is a growing recognition of the need to increase transparency in our campaign finance system to build trust and accountability with the citizens we represent."
The bill lists 31 sponsors and co-sponsors in the House. State Sen. Jon Woods, R-Springdale, sponsors the legislation in that chamber.
The only negative Della Rosa has heard is from legislators who worry that some candidates may not have access to Internet connections needed to file the reports into the state's computerized database. But her research shows that all parts of the state now have some kind of Internet availability, whether broadband, dial-up or satellite.
Her bill would require candidates to start filing their campaign finance reports electronically as of Oct. 1.
Currently, lobbyists are the only group required to file by computer.
Della Rosa's bill does not require political action committees to file into computer databases; so paper forms would still be acceptable from them.
After Arkansas voters on Nov. 4 prohibited corporate contributions to candidates, experts said they expect more campaign donations to flow through PACs.
Della Rosa said she'll likely push for computerized filing by PACs in the next session. And she'll work with the secretary of state's office to propose a more up-to-date electronic filing system then.
"Right now what we want to achieve is the transparency," Della Rosa said. "Let's at least get the car on the road. It won't have heated seats and leather, but it will kind of get us going."
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in August that Arkansas is among a handful of states that still accept paper campaign-finance disclosure reports -- handwritten or typed and posted page-by-page online as documents that cannot be sorted by amounts or names.
Researchers can spend days or weeks recording and sorting the donor information for just one statewide race, the newspaper's survey found.
The state's current electronic filing system for campaign-finance reports is optional for candidates. Many in the state's most-talked-about races choose to file paper reports.
In the governor's race last year, for example, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and his Democratic opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, filed paper documents that reported raising more than $10.7 million through Oct. 31.
The only way voters could examine that information was to leaf through hundreds of pages of contributions that ranged from roughly $50 to $2,000 each.
A Section on 02/03/2015