The State of Disclosure in Connecticut

A poor performance in Online Contextual and Technical Usability and a lack of improvement in access to disclosure data contribute to Connecticut’s overall D and rank of 31, which puts its campaign finance disclosure program in the bottom half of all of the states.

Connecticut law requires candidates to file quarterly statements in non-election years and two statements before an election.  Candidates must provide information about contributors who give $30 or more and a contributor’s occupation and employer are required for contributions greater than $100.  Candidates and committees must itemize all expenditures and subvendor information is required.  An major gap in the law is that neither last-minute contributions nor last-minute independent expenditures are disclosed until after the election.  Electronic filing is mandatory for statewide candidates who reach a $250,000 threshold, but is voluntary for legislative candidates.

Connecticut again received a D- for Disclosure Content Accessibility, because very few, if any, improvements have been made in the last year.  The Secretary of the State’s web site features a searchable database of contributions, but it contains only electronically filed reports, which represent just five percent of the filings online.  The other 95 percent are accessible through the “File-It” system of scanned records, and cannot be searched or sorted. The disclosure portion of the site would be much easier to navigate if the two interfaces for viewing reports – CFIS and File-It – were integrated and the data organized by candidate, rather than by filing method. Currently, a site visitor might start in the CFIS system and go through five screens before arriving at a screen that says, “This committee has not reported its financial transactions electronically; please go to the File-It system to review the hard copy reports filed for this Committee.”  There is no searchable database of expenditures for the e-filed records, and none of the electronic data can be downloaded, despite the agency’s previous plans to make this enhancement.

The state’s poorest performance comes in the area of web site usability.  Connecticut still has an F and its rank in this subcategory dropped from 33 to 46, mainly due to a very low usability testing score and the fact that other states have made significant improvements.  There is almost no information about campaign finance restrictions and disclosure requirements, and there are no lists of candidates’ spending and fundraising totals to help site visitors quickly compare candidates’ activity.

Disclosure Agency: Secretary of the State
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.sots.state.ct.us