Hosemann launches 'searchable' campaign finance reports
Mississippi politicians running for state or district offices now can — if they so choose — file campaign finance reports in a “searchable” electronic format that will allow people to more easily track the influence of money in politics.
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, in an online news conference Tuesday, said he will lobby the Legislature to make electronic filing mandatory for statewide, district and legislative offices by 2020. He said he will push this in the 2017 legislative session along with numerous other election and voting reforms that failed to pass in this year’s session, including prohibitions against candidates spending campaign money on personal expenses and online voter registration.
Mississippi is the last state to allow upper-ticket candidates to file paper — even handwritten — campaign finance reports. One last cycle did hers in calligraphy. Mississippi is one of the few states that doesn’t provide the public a searchable database to track campaign donations and spending. All states surrounding Mississippi provide such data and access. Here, campaign finance records are available online, but in PDF format, essentially pictures of pages of records that must be printed or perused and searched or tallied manually.
“Mandatory online filing will take an act of the Mississippi Legislature,” Hosemann said. “In the interim, my hope is candidates and political committees will choose to use our website voluntarily for the sake of efficiency and good government.”
Hosemann said the new format that went online Tuesday, for politicians who use it, would allow voters to search and collate campaign contributions and expenditures. For instance, he said, a voter could easily search to see how much a donor gave to multiple candidates.
Hosemann said he plans in 2017 to push lawmakers again for campaign-finance reforms including a prohibition on personal spending of donations and clear definition of what constitutes personal spending. He said he will also try again for passage of requiring itemization of campaign credit card spending. Many politicians on their reports will list lump-sum payments to credit card companies instead of what the campaign actually purchased.
An ongoing Clarion-Ledger report, Public Office/Private Gain, has shown that many politicians take advantage of Mississippi’s weak campaign finance laws and reporting requirements and nearly nonexistent enforcement to spend campaign money in ways that would land them in jail in most other states — legislators in particular.
RELATED: Special report: Public Office/Private Gain
Lawmakers and statewide politicians have spent campaign donations on cars, clothes, children’s parties, out-of-state trips, taxes, car insurance, apartments, payments to their own companies and used them as retirement accounts. The setup has been described as “legalized bribery,” allowing politicians to line their own pockets with money from special interests and lobbyists in ways most states and the federal government prohibit.
Hosemann said he expects there will be some “common-sense campaign finance reform” before the Legislature again in 2017.
“There are some gray areas,” Hosemann said. “If someone takes their wife or husband to a political event and pays for their dinner or something — you can see how that’s questionable — In my opinion there are some not-gray areas, to buy cars or boots or other items disclosed by (The Clarion-Ledger) in articles.”
The new online campaign finance report system went live on Tuesday, Hosemann said, and could be used by judicial candidates for the November elections for their reports required by Oct. 10. For most state politicians, the first opportunity to use the new system will be for reports due Jan. 31 of 2017.
Contact Geoff Pender at 601-961-7266 or gpender@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @GeoffPender on Twitter.
