Vermont
has made only minimal changes to its
campaign finance disclosure program in
the past year, and still ranks among
the poorest performing states in the
country. A
string of Fs in the four Grading State
Disclosure categories resulted in an overall
F and rank of 45, down from 42 in 2003.
Vermont’s disclosure law, which
ranks 45th in the nation, requires candidates
to file once in non-election years and
twice before each election. Candidates
must disclose detailed information about
contributors who give more than $100, but
occupation and employer are not disclosed. Last-minute
contributions are not reported prior to
the election. All expenditures must
be disclosed, but subvendor information
is not reported. Another weakness
in the state’s law is that independent
expenditures do not have to be disclosed. Vermont
does not have an electronic filing program
for statewide or legislative candidates.
Vermont’s strongest performance
is in Disclosure Content Accessibility,
but the state received an F in that category
too. Accessing campaign finance records
online can be difficult, primarily due
to the interface for viewing reports on
the Secretary of State’s web site. Vermont
is the only state in the country that makes
reports accessible through a text search
of all campaign documents, which functions
like a “find” command in that
you still have to browse the document to
locate instances of the word having been
returned. The problem with this system
is most evident when trying to locate the
reports of the current Secretary of State,
Deborah Markowitz. A search for “Markowitz” turns
up not only the Secretary’s disclosure
reports, but any filing in which another
candidate has addressed correspondence
to the Secretary. Providing one index
page for each candidate that lists the
history of that person’s filings,
and links to the complete reports, would
be a major improvement over the system
as it is currently configured.
There
has been some progress in Online Contextual
and Technical Usability, but an inadequate
description of which candidates’ records
are available online, difficulty in locating
the disclosure web site from the state’s
homepage, and a very low usability testing
score keep Vermont from earning a passing
grade in this category. Strengths
in web site usability include both current
and historical overview information comparing
candidates’ total fundraising and
spending activity, a complete list of candidates,
and comprehensive information about Vermont’s
disclosure requirements and contribution
limits.
