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Washington's Evergreen Campaign Database
by Michael Martinez
Voters in Washington state have access to the most robust and accurate campaign spending data for statewide contests in the country, according to a new report released Wednesday.
The Campaign Disclosure Project found that the Evergreen State has the strongest campaign disclosure policies. It is the fourth year that Washington has topped the list compiled by the project, which is a collaborative effort by the California Voter Foundation, the Center for Governmental Studies and the University of California at Los Angeles law school.
According to the study, Washington has the most effective e-filing system and the most accessible campaign disclosure content. The Web site of the state's Public Disclosure Commission, which allows citizens to browse through disclosure filings and search a comprehensive database, received high marks.
California and Oregon ranked second and third. Eighteen states received "B" grades or better. More than a dozen states, however, received failing marks. Alabama, South Dakota and Wyoming were among the states listed as having the weakest campaign disclosure regimes.
"Access to campaign finance data enables voters to make informed election choices and hold politicians accountable," California Voter Foundation President Kim Alexander said in a news release.
The report cited considerable progress among the states in establishing e-filing systems. It found that 40 states now allow candidates to submit financial reports electronically and that 23 states now require campaigns to do so. All but two states, Montana and Wyoming, post campaign data on public Web sites.
The project noted considerable recent improvements in Colorado, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. It credited a strengthened campaign disclosure law for the progress in Oregon, which scored higher this year in every category.
"Oregon's new reporting system is unique in that transactions are reported continuously," the report said. "The result in Oregon is immediate, ongoing disclosure of campaign data online."
Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, said state agencies clearly have been working harder to improve the services they offer their citizens. But he said legislation ultimately has the greatest impact on reporting and disclosure by political campaigns.
"That nearly half of the states earned higher grades in 2007 shows that state disclosure agencies take their responsibilities very seriously and are actively working to provide better access," he said.
Attorneys General Want More Microsoft Oversight
A group of state prosecutors this week asked a federal court to extend its antitrust oversight of Microsoft.
The attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and Massachusetts asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in a court filing to continue a judgment against the company until 2012, AP reported. The law enforcers followed through on an announcement they made last month to request that a 2002 antitrust settlement regarding the compatibility of the company's software be extended before it expires later this fall.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told Dow Jones Newswires after a September court hearing that competition in the personal-computer software marketplace still is not as robust as it should be. He argued that extending the oversight would do little harm.
A Microsoft spokesman told News.com that the Tuesday filing is "nothing new" and that it only formalizes the argument made by the attorneys general last month. He argued that the consent decree has served its purpose during the past five years and effectively ended the practices that the court found were anticompetitive.
California Tax Cheats Include Tech Firms
A California agency this week made headlines by making a list of the state's biggest tax cheaters publicly available on the Internet.
The California Franchise Tax Board posted to the Web a list of the names and addresses of the state's largest income-tax debtors. The list includes several technology firms, as well as some notable celebrities.
According to the agency, the mobile telephone firm Cellular Systems owes the state more than $2 million in taxes. CityCom Communications and the information technology company Spectra FX each owe the state close to a $1 million.
In a release, FTB Chairman John Chiang said the list was posted because the debtors collectively owe the state more than $249 million. "Hopefully, this action will encourage these taxpayers to come forward, pay what they owe and quickly help the Franchise Tax Board remove their names from the list," he said.
Several entertainers, including former football player and actor O.J. Simpson and singer Dionne Warwick, were on the list. A decade ago, Simpson was found liable in California civil court for the killings of his ex-wife and her friend after being acquitted of criminal charges in the deaths.
The agency last month notified all 224 debtors that their names would be on the list.
A Grim Picture Of Wisconsin's IT Work
Auditors in Wisconsin this week told lawmakers that they expect it will take roughly 20 years to pay off information technology projects that were designed to save the state money.
The state Legislative Audit Committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss a new report documenting the financial woes of the IT initiatives, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. A report compiled by the panel and released in the spring identified roughly two dozen of the state's IT initiatives as "at-risk" projects.
State Sen. Robert Cowles, a Republican, said the report is particularly troubling because IT upgrades were supposed to help the state cut costs and operate more efficiently. The report estimates that it will cost the state $13.6 million to finish a project to standardize its e-mail system and more than $20 million to complete a separate effort to consolidate the state's business software infrastructure.
State Chief Information Officer Oskar Anderson said that a recent report by a consultant estimating the cost of a server overhaul was "overzealous" and that the state is likely to spend $65 million on the program -- five times more than the original estimate.
The audit also identified 22 at-risk projects that may cost the state as much as $120 million to finish. The initiatives included programs to upgrade the state's Medicaid management, unemployment insurance and voter-registration systems.
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