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The State of Disclosure in Connecticut
Connecticut received its third consecutive
D in 2007, though the state did improve from
an F to a D in the Disclosure Content Accessibility
category.
Connecticut’s disclosure law earned
a C+ in 2007, and ranks better than half of
the states in this study. Candidates must provide
details about contributors who give $50 or
more, and occupation and employer data for
those giving $100 or more. Campaign expenses
must be disclosed as well, including those
made by subvendors. Connecticut law requires
electronic filing only for statewide candidates
raising $250,000 or more, a threshold met by
only half of those candidates in 2006. Unsuccessful
legislation introduced in 2007 would have reduced
the threshold to $5,000 and expanded mandatory
electronic filing to legislative candidates.
Additionally, in 2005, Connecticut law transferred
campaign disclosure responsibilities from the
Secretary of State's office to the State Elections
Enforcement Commission (SEEC), meaning that
a single agency now manages both the state's
disclosure program and a new program for public
financing of elections. With the reorganization,
the SEEC is in the process of developing a
new electronic disclosure system to enhance
the ease of filing for candidates and improve
public access to the records.
Connecticut
received a passing grade in the Disclosure
Content Accessibility category in 2007 in
part due to the state now offering campaign
data on disk. Major deficiencies of Connecticut’s
disclosure site are the lack of a searchable
database of campaign expenses and the limited
options available for searching campaign
contributions. Electronically-filed data
can be sorted online, but data cannot be
downloaded from the site; the new filing
system will include this and other useful
tools not currently available to the public.
Connecticut
continues to struggle in the Online Contextual
and Technical Usability category, receiving
an F in each of the four Grading State Disclosure
studies. One positive change made with the
move to the new agency is that campaign finance
restrictions are now listed on the same site
as the campaign data. Unfortunately, the
concerns noted with the Secretary of State’s
site in the 2005 assessment remain on the SEEC
site, since electronic filings are still maintained
separately from those filed on paper. This
means users have to sort through two systems
to determine a candidate’s filing method.
Fortunately, the SEEC’s development of
the new disclosure system is a positive step
toward a more user-friendly disclosure site.
→ Quick
Fix: Provide site visitors with an
overview of totals raised and spent by
candidates for a particular election.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: While searching
for reports to browse, site visitors
can limit the returned list of documents
to either originals or amendments. View
image
 Disclosure Agency: State Elections Enforcement Commission
Disclosure
Web Site: http://www.ct.gov/seec
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