The
bright spot in Montana’s campaign
finance disclosure system is the state’s
campaign disclosure law, which ranks third
in the nation. Failing grades in
Electronic Filing, Disclosure Content Accessibility
and web site usability put the state in
the bottom ten overall.
Montana
law requires candidates to file twice
in non-election years and four times
before an election. Candidates must
report detailed information for all contributions
of $35 or more, including occupation and
employer. Last-minute contributions
of $200 or more must be disclosed within
24 hours for statewide candidates ($100
or more and 48 hours for other candidates). Disclosure
of expenditure information is good, and
subvendor details must be provided. Independent
expenditures must be reported, but those
made at the last-minute are not disclosed
until after the election. Montana
does not have an electronic filing program,
although the issue is being discussed by
the Governor’s Commissioner of Political
Practices Advisory Council, and there has
been movement within the agency toward
the development of an online filing system.
The
Commissioner of Political Practices’ web
site is one of three disclosure sites in
the country that has no campaign finance
data whatsoever. That fact makes
it even more important for the state to
provide easy access to paper copies of
disclosure records, and it does an excellent
job in that area. Outstanding access
to paper records is what gives Montana
a slight edge in Data Content Accessibility
over the other two states that have no
data online, Wyoming and South Carolina,
which are ranked 49th and 50th in this
category.
There
is some good contextual information online,
including a description of the state’s campaign contribution limits
and a comprehensive manual summarizing
the state’s disclosure reporting
requirements. Unfortunately for members
of the public trying to access that contextual
information, it became more difficult this
year to locate the agency’s web site
from the main Montana homepage. That
difficultly may explain why the state’s
usability testing score fell this year,
causing Montana’s rank in this category
to drop to 49 (from last year’s 40.)
