WASHINGTON - In one of the nation’s most closely watched and expensive U.S. Senate races, all but the most dedicated campaign watchers are in the dark about who has donated money more than a month after finance reports were due.
A 1974 law that exempted Senate campaign committees from filing reports directly to the Federal Election Commission means thousands of taxpayer dollars are being spent to retype the Senate campaign-finance reports that were submitted by Jan. 15.
Government transparency advocates said senators have avoided changing the law to keep people from finding out who donates to campaigns. But a Georgetown University professor says senators are simply reluctant to part with tradition or make the process more complicated.
House campaigns and presidential candidates file their reports digitally with the commission, which generally posts the reports in a searchable format on its website within 48 hours. So an Arkansan who wants to know which candidate his neighbors give money to can visit fec.gov and search by name shortly after the reports are due.
But Senate campaign committees give typed or handwritten paper copies of their reports to the secretary of the Senate, who sends them within two days to the commission.
According to the commission, federal employees then scan the reports into a digital format, print them out and send them to a private vendor who is paid to type the information by hand into a spreadsheet.
It can take weeks or months for information on Senate campaign donors to become available in a searchable format online at fec.gov.
U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., has raised $6.2 million since he began campaigning for his re-election bid. His challenger in the November general election is U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who has raised $3.4 million, according to their FEC reports.
People can visit the FEC website to see a summary of what has been raised and spent, and hundreds of pages that list donations to the two campaigns during the past three months.
But they have to pore over voluminous reports - Cotton’s latest report had 504 pages; Pryor’s had 567 pages. Neither report lists donors in alphabetical order.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in August that it would save the federal government $500,000 a year if senators or their campaign committees filed reports electronically with the FEC rather than how they currently file them.
For years, the commission has encouraged Congress to change the law.
“If such reports were electronically filed, the data could be integrated within a few days,” the FEC wrote in a January report.
About 20 of the 100 senators or their campaign committees voluntarily submit their reports electronically, according to the Center for Public Integrity, which tracks money in politics. Arkansas’ U.S. senators don’t. Neither did Cotton.
Sunlight Foundation spokesman Gabriela Schneider said the foundation believes that senators have avoided changing the law to keep the public from knowing who is spending money on their campaigns until it is too late.
“They are doing it so you can’t know there is a lot of activity in the final weeks,” she said. “It’s just a way of delaying accountability.”
In 1999, Congress passed a law requiring electronic filing for anyone who submits financial information to the FEC, but technically Senate candidates don’t submit their reports to the FEC, Schneider said.
Instead they send their reports to the “Secretary of the Senate as custodian for the Federal Election Commission,” as mandated by the Code of Federal Regulations.
“The Senate opted to keep themselves out of that reporting requirement, and I can’t really tell you why,” said Schneider, whose organization fights to expand public access to government information. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard [senators give] a good reason.”
She said legislation changing the law has been put forward half a dozen times but has been ignored or killed.
The Washington-based Sunlight Foundation, the Campaign Legal Center and other freedom of information groups support Senate Bill 375, known as the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, which would require senators and Senate campaign committees to submit finance documents directly to the FEC.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., was approved by the Senate Rules and Administration Committee in July but hasn’t been debated by the Senate.
Tester’s spokesman Dan Malessa said the bill is important.
“It’s a pretty common-sense win-win bill that increases transparency and saves money,” Malessa said.
Pryor’s campaign said the senator will push for legislation to improve transparency in politics, pointing to a 2013 bill that he supported that would require more disclosure from outside groups, corporations and lobbyists. Pryor also supported a bill over the summer that included the change in how senators submit their reports and will support similar legislation in the future, spokesman Erik Dorey said.
But for now, the two-term senator won’t voluntarily submit the data electronically to the FEC.
“He’ll continue to file regular campaign-finance reports as required by current law,” campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in a statement. “Cotton, on the other hand, doesn’t support efforts … to shine a light on outside spending; maybe that’s because of the shadowy Washington special interests bankrolling his Senate ambitions.”
Cotton campaign spokesman David Ray said in a statement that the congressman would likely support a change in the law if he is elected to the Senate. But Cotton will not voluntarily submit his reports electronically with the FEC.
“We’re going to continue filing our reports as we have been, according to all the FEC rules and regulations,” Ray said.
Ray said Pryor should have already worked to make such a change in the law. “He votes all the time to create onerous regulations for Arkansas businesses and entrepreneurs, but rarely to pass anything that would inconvenience members of Congress such as himself,” Ray said.
Schneider said the issue keeps coming up. It was included in the recent appropriations bill but was stripped out before the bill passed in January, she said. Similar bills were discussed in 2012 and 2007, also without public opposition, but did not pass.
“It’s beyond past-due,” she said, adding that in 2014 people expect to be able to get information quickly.
“People are coming to expect that [access] more, but the Senate is still sending their carrier pigeons with a scroll rolled up in the beak,” she said.
Georgetown University government professor Clyde Wilcox said that even before campaign-finance laws were written in the 1970s, senators and their campaign committees filed their reports with the secretary of the Senate.
“This is just a legacy,” Wilcox said. “It is easier for them and tradition.”
Wilcox, who has written several books on campaign donors, said the delay in disclosure is a minor concern compared with tax-exempt nonprofits, also known as 501(c)(4)s, which give millions of dollars but aren’t required to disclose donors and can spend unlimited amounts of money.
“The public’s not paying attention to who’s giving to these candidates anymore,” Wilcox said. “I’m a pretty cynical guy when it comes to campaign finance, and I’m not getting up in arms about this.”
Campaign Legal Center Policy Director Meredith McGehee said the nonprofit focused on campaign-finance transparency has worked to change the law since the early 1980s. She blamed Senate Republicans for killing past efforts.
“Sen. [Mitch] McConnell continues to successfully block its implementation,” she said. “It’s pretty depressing.”
A spokesman for McConnell, R-Ky., replied to questions by saying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., controls what bills go before the chamber.
While she singled out McConnell as an opponent of past legislation limiting campaign contributions, McGehee added that the other 99 members of the Senate aren’t forcing a vote.
“There are a lot of senators there who are just happy as punch to let him be the one blocking it,” she said.
She said senators oppose the change because they are concerned that the donor and spending information would draw scrutiny and lead to more news stories about the sources of campaign cash.
“Senators of both parties feel very vulnerable when people start looking where their money comes from,” McGehee said. “It’s really just a matter of obfuscation. If you have a 24-hour turnaround time, you have less control.”
She said people should care that Senate reports are treated differently than the House reports because the public and the media often lose interest in reports if they’re delayed long enough, and then no one is looking for corruption or holding public figures accountable.
“This goes back to the traditions of Thomas Jefferson that an informed public is the best protection for democracy,” McGehee said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/23/2014