A
major improvement in the Disclosure Content
Accessibility category came too late
to raise Pennsylvania’s grade
either in that category or overall, and
its overall rank actually dropped from
28th to 30th in 2005. The state’s
campaign finance disclosure law is still
its strong point.
Pennsylvania
law requires candidates to report details
about all receipts of $50 or more, including
cumulative amount donated and a contributor
ID. Occupation
and employer are disclosed for contributors
giving at least $250. Expenditure
disclosure is also good, with candidates
reporting accrued expenses, but not subvendor
payments. Last-minute contributions
and independent expenditures must be reported
prior to Election Day. Committees
have the option of filing reports electronically,
but the law does not require it and only
approximately 30 percent of statewide and
legislative candidates do.
The
Pennsylvania Department of State debuted
a searchable database of contributor
records on its web site in August 2005,
but the addition came after the close
of this study’s
evaluation period, and did not affect the
state’s Disclosure Content Accessibility
grade. In addition to browsing campaign
filings on the disclosure web site, visitors
can now search them by contributor name
and zip code, and contribution date and
amount, though not by employer. The
system unfortunately has some technical
limitations, including that site users
cannot enter a date range greater than
one year or search by date alone, and that
the database requires cookies to function
properly but does not disclose this on
the search page. The disclosure agency
now also offers the public campaign data
on CD at a cost of $50, a resource that
can be helpful to journalists and others
wishing to analyze large sets of records.
The
only measurable change in the area of
Online Contextual and Technical Usability
was a slightly lower score in the usability
test, which caused Pennsylvania’s
grade in this category to drop from a D
to a D-. Its rank dropped 12 places
to 37, as other states made usability improvements.
Testers had varying degrees of success
locating information about the governor’s
campaign finance activity on the disclosure
site, with only half giving the site a
high overall rating.
→ Quick
Fix: Add a set
of simple instructions for using the
new searchable database.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: Amended
filings are clearly distinguished
from original filings, and are
marked with a red “A” in
each candidate’s
report index. View image
