|
The State of Disclosure in Kansas
Improvements
in the accessibility and usability categories
in 2007 earned Kansas its first passing grade
in a Grading State Disclosure study.
Kansas’s campaign finance law finished
in the bottom ten overall in 2007 with a D-
in the law category. Candidates must report
detailed information about contributors giving
over $50, including occupation but not employer
data for those giving more than $150. Expenditure
disclosure is stronger, but does not require
reporting of accrued expenditures. A major
deficiency in Kansas’s law is the reporting
gap that occurs in the eleven days preceding
a general election, hiding last-minute spending
from the public until after the election. While
the legislature did not close this gap in 2007,
Kansas did pass House Bill 2081, allowing disclosure
reports to be filed electronically. The Secretary
of State’s office is developing a voluntary
electronic filing program for candidates to
use in 2008.
Kansas
improved online access to campaign data,
moving from an F in 2005 to a D+ in 2007
in this area. The Governmental Ethics Commission
data-enters itemized contributions from filed
reports, and has enhanced the searchable
contributions database by adding additional
search options, including a field for searching
by amount. As of 2006, the Commission also
began scanning, posting and indexing entire
disclosure reports online within hours of
receipt. While the public now has the ability
to browse the scanned documents for campaign
expenditures, the site’s
primary deficiency remains the lack of a searchable
database of expenditures.
Along
with more content, the Commission’s
site became more user-friendly since 2005,
earning a B and ranking 5th in the usability
category. Although usability testers had more
trouble accessing the Commission’s site
from the state’s homepage than in 2005,
most expressed confidence in their ability
to find specific data once there. The site
offers helpful information for comparing finances
between candidates as well as a new “Explanation
of Data” page that details what information
is, and is not data-entered by the Commission.
The public is now able to view scanned documents
on the disclosure site; however, some of the
file sizes are excessively large. For example,
the governor’s July 2006 report is 180
megabytes and can take an hour or more to download,
even with a fast connection.
→ Quick
Fix: Post large, scanned disclosure
reports in small, easy to download
file sections.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: “Quick
Statistics” provide summary
amounts raised and spent for each candidate
and go back to 1993. View image
 Disclosure
Agency: Governmental Ethics
Commision
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.accesskansas.org/ethics
|
