Here's a fuller version of yesterday's story about campaign finance reports for City of Houston electoral offices finally being available online. Today's story also has data about fundraising totals for current city officeholders and a few candidates, plus a brief review of the new system:
Among the first-day glitches: Some candidates' reports did not show up as having been filed on the search page, even though they had been electronically transmitted by the 5 p.m. deadline.Andrew Wheat, research director for Texans For Public Justice, a nonprofit that tracks money and politics, gave the new format mixed reviews. The search functions look limited and may be onerous for the average citizen, he said.
"They are taking the first step toward disclosure, and that's a good thing," he said. "But this should be easy to slice and dice for users, and I'm not seeing that at first glance. There's a lot more that could be done to allow the search sophistication to be more user-friendly."
City Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck, one of the first candidates to file her report, said it was easy to fill out. But she said the question remains whether the reports are easy for the public to search.
"The jury is still out on that," she said. "The format is something I'm still concerned about. For some people who aren't as savvy, it may be confusing. We need easy access and lots of transparency for people to see where our money comes from."
Someone who has kicked the tires on this thing is Matt Stiles, who gives a few illustrations of the results he got, and a promise for the future:
This system, of course, is still very helpful to us reporters. We're in the process now of placing all these records into a database management program, which will allow us to slice and dice the information for trends. Looks for more reporting on this -- stories that wouldn't really have been possible under the old system without massive data entry -- in the coming days.