Sacramento still lags behind rest of state when it comes to campaign-finance disclosure

Last year, a talented Seattle high-schooler named Nick Rubin got deserved media attention and praise for his browser plug-in “Greenhouse,” which scans websites for the names of U.S. senators and Congress members, and provides a quick thumbnail of their major campaign donors.

You can see the utility of this, when you read a news story in which a rep is railing about climate-change policy, and the little box pops up showing his main benefactor is the oil and gas industry. Rubin says his invention “allows people to see the money story behind the news story.” (Did Bites mention that he was 16 at the time?)

Now, would someone whip up some code to do the same for local Sacramento politicians? It would have been helpful for anyone perusing the coverage of Mayor Kevin Johnson’s efforts on behalf of the Sacramento Republic FC soccer team the last couple of weeks. The Republic hopes to be included in Major League Soccer’s expansion sometime in the next few years. Their MLS appeal is connected to the possibility of a new revenue-generating stadium. The club’s hopes seemed to dim last week when, at press time, it looked like MLS was going to invite a Minneapolis team into the big leagues.

Sports Mayor is on the case, however. He held a press conference promising city help for a new Republic stadium, and branded his yet to be explained strategy as “Operation Turnkey.”

Local media outlets covered the story pretty much as told. And they left out the fact that mayor K.J. has received nearly $1 million from Sac Republic owners over the last two years.

Kevin Nagle, the Republic’s biggest local shareholder, pumped $100,000 into Johnson’s strong-mayor campaign last year. Since 2013, he’s donated $370,000 to Johnson’s nonprofit political brand, the Sacramento Public Policy Foundation. Another $325,000 went from Nagle to Johnson’s charter school organization, St. HOPE Academy.

Is that information important to know when considering what kind of help the city of Sacramento should offer, or where the mayor should focus his energies? You bet. Does including the money angle make for a less boosterish piece? Bites supposes. Still, there ought to be a way to get the money story behind the news story.

Sacramento County took a giant step into the 21st century last week, announcing that its new online campaign-financing disclosure system is live.

Soon candidates for every county office—from school board to supervisor to sheriff—will be able to report online who is funding their campaigns.

More importantly, the public will, hopefully, find it much easier to suss out who is trying buy influence over local officeholders.

Until now, Sacramento was woefully behind, the only one among California’s 10 most populous counties not to provide this kind of campaign-finance disclosure on the Web.

There’s just one very important catch: Candidates aren’t required to use the new system. That’s because the county board of supervisors decided to make online filing for candidates voluntary, at least for the next year.

Next spring, the county registrar of voters will report back to the board, letting them know how many candidates are using the new system, and how many prefer to stick with the old paper system.

The board can then decide whether to make online filing mandatory, or even scrap it all together. “If only two people are using it, it might not make sense to do online filing,” said Assistant County Registrar Alice Jarboe.

Bites doesn’t much care if politicians and political candidates like online disclosure. Right now, campaign-finance records are kept in a south Sacramento office that most people can’t get to during the hours it’s open. Copies of the records are expensive. That’s not real access and it’s long past time we changed it.

And the volunteer trial period means we’ll go into the 2016 election cycle with a confused picture, in which some candidates file online and some don’t.

The board of supervisors should change the policy, and require mandatory filing before the next election cycle. Of course, that would mean more public scrutiny of their own campaign donors.

Bites didn’t have much to say about the Jeff Koons thing. Meh. Still, it was hard not to be sympathetic to the folks who complained that the public art process was rigged. Not unlike every other decision related to the arena.

In that context, it was interesting to hear Koons’ description of his work, given to Sacramento Bee reporter Ryan Lillis. Koons was talking about why he likes to use reflective surfaces:

“When you walk by it, you realize that everything is really dependent on you. … It affirms your existence and the importance of your involvement in every moment in life.”

That must sound reassuring to Sacramento, with its world-class inferiority complex. You exist, Sacramento. Your involvement is important. At least, as an audience.