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The State of Disclosure in Minnesota
Minnesota ranked 20th and earned a B- in 2008,
up from a C+ last year and a D- in 2003. Minnesota
earned a C- in the accessibility category and
earned an A- again in the area of web site
usability after having failed in both categories
in 2003.
Minnesota’s disclosure law earned a
B+ and ranked 11th in 2008. Candidates must
disclose details, including occupation and
employer, about contributors giving $100 or
more. Expenditure disclosure is also strong,
with all expenditures of $100 or more reported,
including subvendor data and accrued expenditures.
While the state requires fewer pre-election
reports than most states, Minnesota’s
enforcement provisions are among the strongest
in the country and include both desk reviews
and field audits. Minnesota operates a voluntary
electronic filing program, an option that was
used by over 60 percent of legislative candidates
and over 40 percent of statewide candidates
in the 2006 elections.
In
2008, Minnesota’s Campaign Finance
and Public Disclosure Board added a data download
feature to the online, searchable contributions
database and the state’s accessibility
grade rose from a D+ to a C- as a result. The
database contains all contribution data, whether
filed electronically or data-entered by Board
staff, and is searchable by donor name or zip
code. Search results are sortable, and the
new download feature offers a simple option
for moving the data into a spreadsheet format.
The database offers the ability to limit searches
to a specific employer through a pull-down
menu, but this can be confusing as many employers
are listed several times with different spelling,
hyphenation, or punctuation, thus requiring
multiple searches to view all contributions
made by that company’s employees. For
example, there are ten different listings for 3M and
13 listings for Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Allowing users to select multiple listings
would make it easier to compile comprehensive
data.
Minnesota
achieved a perfect rating on the usability
test for the second straight year and earned
an A- again in the Online Contextual and
Technical Usability category in 2008. As
was the case in the 2007 assessment, testers
expressed high levels of confidence in the
data and found the site easy to understand
this year. Along with the ease of use, the
site features excellent contextual information,
such as overviews of campaign finance trends
going back to 1998, a glossary of common campaign
finance terms, and both original and amended
reports. The site could be improved by providing
a single overview document on the agency homepage
that explains which data is and is not available
on the site, as well as instructions for accessing
the data.
→ Quick
Fix:Allow users to select multiple
entries in the database’s employer
menu so that all listings for the same
company can be viewed on a single page
and downloaded in one step.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: The “Campaign
Finance - Glossary of Terms” defines
the key terms used within the state’s
disclosure law and throughout the disclosure
site. View
image
 Disclosure Agency: Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.cfboard.state.mn.us
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