An
improvement in Hawaii’s law grade
was offset by a drop in its grade for Electronic
Filing Program, leaving the state with
an overall C+, only a slight improvement
over 2003. A continued poor performance
in web site usability, while other states
made lots of progress, caused Hawaii’s
overall rank to drop.
Hawaii’s campaign disclosure law
ranks fourth in the nation. Candidates
must file semi-annual statements in non-election
years and three statements before an election. Candidates
are required to disclose details about
contributions of $100 or more, but a contributor’s
occupation and employer are only required
for contributions of $1,000 or more. Last-minute
contributions of $500 or more must be reported
up to three days before the election. Disclosure
of expenditure details (including subvendor)
and loan information are both particularly
strong. Independent expenditures
must be reported and last-minute independent
expenditures must be disclosed before an
election.
Hawaii’s electronic filing program
is mandatory for statewide candidates who
reach a threshold of $5,000, but still
voluntary for legislative candidates. A
bill that was part of the governor’s
2004 legislative package would have required
e-filing for legislative candidates, but
it stalled in the House. The Campaign
Spending Commission hopes to have web-based
filing in place by 2006, even though it
described funding for the electronic filing
program as inadequate.
There
were few changes in the accessibility
of disclosure records. The state’s
disclosure web site contains a mix of electronically
filed and paper-filed campaign finance
reports, with the timeliness of the data
dependent upon the method of filing. Electronic
records are posted almost immediately,
but it can take one to two months for paper-filed
records to be scanned and made available
online. Although Hawaii’s databases
of contributions and expenditures allow
sorting, downloading, and searching on
variety of fields, the technical problems
that plagued them last year persist. Access
to paper copies of disclosure records from
the agency is excellent.
Hawaii
again received a low grade for web site
usability, which is not surprising given
there were few changes made in this area. While it did become easier
to locate the Commission’s web site
from the main state site, Hawaii’s
usability testing score was not affected
by that improvement. The disclosure
site has even less overview information
in 2004 than it did last year, because
a web page listing total spending by 2002
gubernatorial candidates was removed. There
is still no explanation of whose records
are available online and where to find
them, which is a problem considering the
multiple access points for disclosure reports.
