From The Editors: Delco takes important step of putting campaign finance filings online
Regular readers of these pages will know we have been unflinching in our critiques of the Delaware County Council. And frankly, it’s been warranted.
From a $76 million budget deficit and a proposed 23 percent tax increase, to the ill-conceived takeover of the county prison, the establishment of a redundant public health department, and the staggering $4.5 million spent on third-party legal fees, this council has consistently pursued policies that burden taxpayers while delivering questionable results.
These are serious, far-reaching issues that overshadow smaller victories. However, even amid the council’s troubling record, it’s only fair to acknowledge when they get something right — and putting campaign finance filings online is one such instance.
Candidates for statewide offices like governor, treasurer, or a state representative or senate seat all file their campaign finance reports with the Department of State in Harrisburg, and those filings are then available online through the state’s campaign finance web portal. It’s been that way for years.
However, nearly all local races like sheriff, county council or commissioner seats, school board seats, and municipal races — the campaign finance filings for all of those are filed locally to the county.
When these documents aren’t online, someone must instead contact the county offices and make arrangements — usually this means going down to the county offices to review, and then purchase copies, all of which is a completely unnecessary hassle in the internet era. With this new step from Delco, a person in Pasadena or in Pittsburgh can now look for the filings of these local races from their computer. They can do that without the headache of travel or paying out of pocket for documents that should be free; furthermore, someone can do that at 1 a.m. when county offices are closed.
Montgomery County has long had its campaign finance filings online as well. Chester and Bucks still do not, even though both counties have, at times, expressed interest in doing so.
The upshot is that curious minds now have a way to access these previously provincial documents, and it’s a step forward for political transparency in the commonwealth’s fifth most populous county.
The system isn’t perfect. For example, one is unable to search by donor or search expenditures by name. We hope those upgrades will happen. Still, as the saying goes, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. For this progress, we offer a measured “kudos.”
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While we’re on the topic…
Transparency in campaign finance is so important, it’s time the General Assembly think about requiring all counties to find some way to post their filings online.
Some will argue this is an unfunded mandate on the counties, and there’s likely merit to that. Yet the fix is probably so inexpensive, the General Assembly should consider funding it.
Another answer is to require all campaign finance filings to be uploaded through the Department of State website, similar to what state candidates already do.
This remedy is slightly more complicated. As we understand it, the Department of State currently sends the filings it receives to data entry centers in order for the data to be cleaned and then put in database format to enable advanced search features.
There’s no need for this level of treatment for the local races currently filed at the county level. Merely hosting the raw copies of the filings would be sufficient, as long as the filings are searchable by candidate or committee name.
Yet some may still object that by requiring all campaign finance filings to be sent to Harrisburg, this somehow intrudes on issues of “local control.” Nonsense. There’s hardly any variance available when it comes to campaign finance filings. The due dates are mandatory and the same for all candidates in all counties. That which should be reported and that which can be excluded from a filing are already determined. What other decisions can a county make about campaign finance filings that the commonwealth has left undecided?
The core purpose of campaign finance documents is for them to be available to the public — there really is no other reason for them. The internet and the many attendant technologies have matured enough since 1995 that it is nothing short of ridiculous that so many of these documents essentially remain hidden in bureaucratic closets. It’s time for that to change.