Searchable campaign finance reports? So much for that

We don't often pull back the curtain on our work here at Bay Buzz. But we wanted to let you know about something we hoped to put together for this mayor's race. Hoped being the key word.

For national and state elections, there is a Web site you can visit (run by the government) to track election contributions. You can type in the names of potential contributors and see whom they gave to. For instance, you can track the contributions of the Sembler Co. or Craig Sher or anyone for that matter.

In some cases, you can track the contributions by ZIP code or even address.

The point is, you get a much better picture of who's giving and who's getting.

At the city level, you get none of that. Candidates provide pieces of paper, which are then scanned in by the city clerk as a PDF. There's no searching, no tallying, no sorting available.

Bay Buzz hoped to change that. Hoped, again, being the key word. We asked each of the major candidates to provide campaign finance reports in a manner that can be uploaded to our Web site for everyone to search. We asked only for the data that had already been provided to the clerk, only in a different format. (The best example is rather than giving us a paper printout, they give us a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in an e-mail attachment. We already have the paper, of course).

We've been told by computer experts that providing this data would take as little as 15 minutes of work.

The response from candidates: Silence.

Only Scott Wagman's campaign attempted to comply with our request. Bill Foster said he didn't think it was technically possible. Larry Williams declined. The other candidates didn't even respond to our request.

Too bad.

Aaron Sharockman, Times Staff Writer

*

Comments

[Scott K. Doucheman]

You can find them here:
http://www.stpete.org/cityclerk/elections/campaign_candidate_treasurer_s_reports/mayoral_reports.asp

15 minutes? If your experts can retype docs that fast, why not just do it yourselves?

[Barry]

Candidate Bill Foster said he didn't think it was technically possible - I think Peter can help with this.

[Nobody...]

Interesting that only one candidate tried. Guess that tells us all which one is most interested in being open and honest about his finances.

[tootsie roll]

What an eye opener for me to see who is giving to whom. Big money versus small donations by individuals in most races. I guess that is always the way.
I'll go witht the small donations and their votes.

[tootsie roll]

What an eye opener for me to see who is giving to whom. Big money versus small donations by individuals in most races. I guess that is always the way.
I'll go witht the small donations and their votes.

[...]

It is a pain so why would they do it. If it really takes 15 minutes YOU do it.

Also, why would they give away information that will hurt them? If the Times provides it to all to see then the other candidates will change their tactics to mitagate damages or gain advantage against others. Giving away "competitive information" is stupid. Clearly Wagman is stupid to provide it and the rest smarter. As a business "leader" you would expect Wagman to be smarter than that.

With that said, I cannot wait to see Wagmans chart of giving. Times - will you please publish it.

[Ken]

Open and honest??? Are you kidding. Wagman is an idiot for proviing it. Open and honest is for AFTER you win the race.

[get over yourself]

This is all public record and available at the city clerk's office ----as the Times very well knows and that is exactly where the Times gets their public record for free any day of the year.

If it's too much trouble for them to get off their duffs and actually go to city hall they can just go to the city's website where all candidate financial reports are posted to date. Any citizen can see this info at any time.

What a silly complaint from the Times.

[Cue the violins]

In other words, you're saying to the candidates: Give me a stick with which I can beat you about the head.

Brilliant strategy there, cubbie

[Steve]

Whoever told you 10 minutes obviously knows nothing about preparing financial reports for city elections.

Most local candidates can't spend the money necessary to buy software to automatically produce these reports. In fact, none of the mayoral candidate's reports indicate they were filed using the most commonly used filing software.

Several are hand written, some are likely using a PDF fill-in form and some are probably extracts from a spreadsheet for the supporting detail.

So Times, do like the rest of us, do your own homework, do your own legwork. Campaign finance reporting is onerous enough without expecting these campaigns to do your work for you or expect them to make your job easier.

[I've seen it all now]

Man, the Times must have really cut back on the manpower. Their "experts" can't figure out how to transpose the numbers to a spreadsheet?

Yeah, maybe we now know why newspapers are dying.

[Bill Gates]

The "problem" or 'delay' is unacceptable; this is a no-brainer… and I’d like to know how the one candidate “tried”.

[Big Joe]

Where is Schorsh and why isn't this on his blog?

[question]

What is the link for the government website mentioned in the blog entry?

[Times Editor]

http://www.stpete.org/cityclerk/elections/campaign_candidate_treasurer_s_reports/mayoral_reports.asp

[oy vey]

I'm all for open government, but.....if I saw a total of all the political checks I've written over the last few years, it would feel as bad as adding up all my bar bills and restaurant tabs.

[Pelican Pete]

I know their have been staffing cutbacks at the times, but if the times wants the data in a certain format they should not expect anyone else to privide it for them.

I don't know of any of the campaigns with there own IT department. Most of the campaigns are run with volunteer labor.

Hey Aaron will you please come to my office for a few minutes to do some filing for me?

[PDF format to protect info does not allow reconfiguration]

Timing is everything. I suspect that the campaigns were busy getting their message out during the week that Aaron made his "request". 58,000 mail out ballots. The info is online and thanks to "Times Editor" for providing it.

[What a whiner]

Aaron's immaturity is showing.

[Journo on a high horse?]

Aaron, OCR the docs yourself, so that you have searchable PDFs. Unalterable, yet searchable. Not sortable like Excel though. OCR'd PDFs should work well enough for what you are trying to do, as long as the scanner is reading typed docs and not hand written reports. And if you dont know what OCR is, well then good luck...

[Urban Legend]

Attention Bloggers:

Gets lots of website hits by OCRing or retyping the Treasurers' Reports for the St Pete campaigns, and launching a website.

Time required: One weekend

Showing up the St Pete Times: Priceless

[Carl]

Many of the reports submitted at the Municipal level are handwritten.

Show me where that software is available.