Behind the times
Pay your bills online, utility and credit card companies encourage us.
Do your banking on your phone. Make your mortgage payments with the click of a button.
Search and apply for jobs while sitting at your computer, including state government positions.
File your taxes online — it’s fast and easy, and your refund comes quickly. Seventy-seven percent of people did it last year.
The message is clear: Go paperless as much as possible in the modern world. So why is the state of Pennsylvania still accepting paper copies of campaign finance reports?
Continuing this arcane method is costly and time consuming. Someone has to scan in the reports and post them online, which can take weeks.
The state is way behind in posting reports on its website. By primary Election Day, the state still had not put online some mid-March campaign finance reports, let alone the reports due April 13. Even for the biggest state races such as auditor general and state treasurer, there were still some candidate fundraising reports missing by Election Day.
The figures were even more dismal for state House and state Senate seats. There were 372 people running for the House and only 339 reports online when there should have been at least 744 reports (one for March and one for April).
On the Senate side, there were 49 people running and only 70 reports online when there should have been at least 98.
The state outsourced this process in an effort to save money, but it still costs the state upwards of $35,000, according to figures from last year when there was a debate about whether the state could even afford that.
There is a simple way to make this budget item go away and give the public better access to this information: Require all candidates to file their reports online.
The online filing service is already set up, and a few candidates take advantage, such as Republican Auditor General candidate John Maher, the first one in his race to have his mid-March and mid-April reports on the Department of State website.
This should be government reform 101. A group of 21 freshmen Republican House members actually made this one of their top four “Freshman Reform Initiatives.”
Rep. Lynda Culver, R-Northumberland, sponsored House Bill 2203 to require e-filing of the reports. But her bill has languished in committee.
Enough is enough. The public deserves to have timely campaign finance reporting, and the state certainly needs to eliminate unnecessary costs.
Gov. Tom Corbett, Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele and Republican leaders in the Legislature should make this a priority.
It even has bipartisan support. Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, introduced a similar bill to Rep. Culver’s in the past. Josephs told The Associated Press, “It’s a mystery to me” why the state is still accepting paper copies of campaign finance reports.
It’s a mystery to everyone why the state is not taking action to save money and provide more transparency when it comes to the money financing election candidates.
The (Harrisburg) Patriot-News