Coffman Leads Effort to Make Campaign Contributions More Transparent

Bi-Partisan Task Force to Seek Public Testimony

Denver, June 28, 2007 – To increase transparency and accountability in Colorado politics, Secretary of State Mike Coffman will lead an effort to overhaul the state’s campaign and political finance website, allowing the public to more easily search and analyze the money flowing into political campaigns.

“The goal is total transparency,” Coffman said. “Voters have a right to know who is contributing to candidates for public office. We already require political campaigns to report their finances, now we need to make it easier for the public to search and view this information.”

The current campaign finance system is antiquated and cumbersome for the public to use. Information that should be readily available often requires a user to visit multiple web pages and do multiple searches. The Secretary of State’s office routinely gets questions from the public on how to locate specific information that should be more easily found.

Over the past several years the Secretary of State’s office has implemented technical changes to the website to keep up with changing campaign finance laws and to make the information more accessible. However, the system is in need of an entire overhaul.

Coffman has convened a task force to analyze the current website and make recommendations to his office on how the new system should look.

The Campaign Finance Disclosure Task Force will hold public meetings throughout the summer to receive testimony from the public and various users of the campaign finance system, including political parties and candidate campaign committees, county clerks, campaign finance software vendors and members of the media.

As a first step, Coffman requested legislation to appropriate funds to the Secretary of State’s office to conduct the website overhaul. Senate Bill 259, sponsored by Senator Ken Gordon (D-Denver) and Representative Morgan Carroll (D-Aurora), was given late bill status last session and passed with near unanimous support.

"American citizens need as much information as they can get before they cast their vote,” Gordon said. “I completely support Secretary Coffman's efforts to make campaign finance information more accessible."

The members of the Campaign Finance Disclosure Task Force are:

• Colin Campbell, Echelon Data
• Bill Compton, Political Director, Colorado Democratic Party
• Senator Ken Gordon (D-Denver)
• Christi Heppard, Campaign and Political Finance Director, Secretary of State
• Representative Jim Kerr (R-Littleton)
• Representative Morgan Carroll (D-Aurora)
• Ed Otte, Executive Director, Colorado Press Association
• Cindy Rasor, Jefferson County Clerk & Recorder’s office
• Rory Schmalzreid, Assignment Editor, ABC 7 News
• Trevor Timmons, Director of Information Technology, Secretary of State

Each of the public meetings organized will focus on a different component of the campaign finance system. The first public meeting is scheduled for 5:00 PM on Thursday, July 12 at the Secretary of State’s office at 1700 Broadway, Denver, Colorado.

The meeting will focus on how the financial data is entered into the system by political campaigns. Task force members will seek testimony from political campaign committees, campaign treasurers and other registered agents who enter data into the system.

Subsequent meetings will be announced once dates and locations are finalized. The task force will submit its recommendations to Coffman in the fall of 2007. Work on the new website will begin in 2008, with the goal of a 2009 launch.