Progress
in the area of electronic filing was
balanced out by a drop in Texas’ Disclosure
Content Accessibility grade, leaving the
state with another overall C+ and a rank
that fell from fourth place in 2003 to
ninth in 2004.
Texas
law requires candidates to file twice
in non-election years, and at least three
times before each election. Details
about contributors who give more than $50
must be reported, and all candidates must
now disclose occupation and employer information. Last-minute
contributions must be reported prior to
the election. Candidates are required
to report detailed information about expenditures
of over $50, not including subvendor information. Texas
requires the reporting of independent expenditures,
and last-minute independent expenditures
must be disclosed prior to the election. Electronic
filing is mandatory for candidates reaching
a threshold of $20,000, and the Ethics
Commission will no longer grant routine
waivers to filers who state they do not
use computers to track campaign data.
Accessing
Texas campaign finance records online
became more difficult in 2004, and the
state’s grade dropped from an
A- to a B- in this area. During the
project’s research window of January
to June, 2004, it was not possible to perform
a search across all filers’ reports
on the Texas Ethics Commission web site,
which had offered this kind of searching
capability in the previous year. Ethics
Commission staff explained that an increase
in the amount of data in the system had
bogged down the server and rendered it
unable to conduct such a search. The
Ethics Commission upgraded its server in
October and the site again gives visitors
the more expanded search option, but the
change did not occur in time to affect
the state’s grade for Disclosure
Content Accessibility.
The
Online Contextual and Technical Usability
of the state’s disclosure web site
did not change in 2004. The addition
of information about the state’s
campaign contribution limit was offset
by a small drop in Texas’ usability
testing score, and the state again received
a D+ in this category. The most important
piece of contextual information on the
web site is an overview of campaign finance
activity showing total fundraising and
spending figures for all filers. Other
background information is still lacking,
however, including a summary of the state’s
disclosure requirements and a thorough
description of which candidates’ reports
are available on the Internet and what
time period is covered by the online records.
