News Update! SB 3 has passed its final vote in the Senate and is on the Governor's desk awaiting signature or veto.

SACRAMENTO – The Cal-Access system, which publishes campaign finance and lobbying data, was created in 2000 and has had minimal updates since. Since the release of Cal-Access, Apple has created the operating systems Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks. It went online seven years before the release of the first iPhone.

Cal-Access’ launch predates those of Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Wikipedia now has over 29.4 million articles in 287 languages. Facebook has 1.15 billion users. Twitter has 200 million. 6 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube every month with 100 hours of video uploaded per minute.

In 2000, Americans using the internet were predominantly doing so with a 56k modem, over a hundred times slower than a cable internet connection.

And Cal-Access is still running the same system today that they were in 2000.

Today, in an attempt to bring Cal-Access out of the technological Dark Ages, the Assembly voted in favor of SB 3, a bill that will modernize the Cal-Access system and bring increased transparency and accessibility to campaign finance and the lobbying process.

“The Cal-Access system is the only tool available to the public that shows who has influence in Sacramento and puts it at our fingertips,” said Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo). “Californians deserve a modern and efficient means of accessing this information rather than a relic from the early days of the internet."

SB 3 calls for the Secretary of State and the Fair Political Practices Commission to look into the technological requirement and cost for a modern online database for campaign finance & lobbying disclosures. In 2011, the Cal-Access system went off line for a full month due to technical difficulties, obliterating the public's ability to track campaign spending and lobbyist activity.

“Cal-Access is a system that was modern and cutting edge in 2000,” said Philip Ung, Policy Advocate for California Common Cause. “However, that was a few years before MySpace was considered modern and cutting edge. In our digital era, the government should embrace transparency.”

“Voters need to be able to track the money spent by special interests to influence their decisions at the ballot box” said Jennifer Waggoner, President of the League of Women Voters of California. “SB 3’s improvements to campaign disclosure in California will give them tools they need to cut through the haze.”

SB 3 will also require campaign treasurers to take online training in campaign finance law to make sure elections are conducted fairly and legally.

“An accessible system is an honest system” said Yee. “SB 3 will give us a political system that is more transparent.”

SB 3 will return to the Senate for concurrence, and will then go to the Governor

Dan Lieberman, Press Secretary, Office of Leland Y. Yee, Ph.D., California State Senate, www.sen.ca.gov/yee

Subject

Money in Politics: SB 3 updates campaign finance reporting, improves lobbyist database

In response to

Assembly passes SB 3 (Yee and Lieu)