Oregon
introduced a new system for viewing campaign
finance records online, but the change
did not occur until late September 2004,
and the state will not receive credit
for the improvement until next year’s
Grading State Disclosure report. For
now, Oregon’s only gain came in the
area of Electronic Filing, and its overall
grade is still in the D range.
Candidates
in Oregon are required to file once in
non-election years and twice before each
election. Detailed information
about contributors who give $50 or more
must be disclosed, including their occupations,
but not employers. Last-minute contributions
of more than $500 and independent expenditures
of more than $1,000 must be reported before
the election. Candidates are required
to report all expenditures, including some
subvendor information. Electronic
filing is mandatory for any state candidate
reaching a threshold of $50,000, and the
waivers that were given last year to those
who said they were unable to e-file are
no longer permitted.
The
Secretary of State appointed a panel
to examine access to campaign finance
data in Oregon, and its preliminary report
recognized the need for change. As noted above,
the agency’s web site now features
an interface for browsing complete campaign
finance reports in PDF format, but that
enhancement was made after this project’s
evaluation period and Oregon’s Disclosure
Content Accessibility grade is unchanged. The
state’s 2005 grade will reflect the
expansion. Oregon’s strengths
in this category are still the speed with
which information is posted to the Internet,
and access to paper copies of reports,
which is excellent compared to many other
states. The most serious shortcoming
is the lack of a searchable database, and
that feature is so far not included on
the recently updated disclosure site.
Oregon’s second F came in the Online
Contextual and Technical Usability category,
and was caused by an inadequate description
of whose records are available online,
and the lack of browsable filings at the
time of the study’s research. Having
no browsable reports online means the state
cannot receive credit for the labeling
of reporting periods in a report index,
or the posting of both original and amended
filings. It is also somewhat difficult
to locate the Secretary of State’s
web site from the main State of Oregon
web site, which contributed to the state’s
low usability testing score.
