Maine lags in tracking campaign money

Following the money in Maine politics could be much easier, according to a report released today.

The study, conducted by the California-based Campaign Disclosure Project, gave Maine a D-minus, ranking the state 29th in the nation on how it collects campaign finance records and provides them to the public.

“Maine clearly has a lot of room for improvement,” said Rachel Zenner, spokeswoman for the project, a collaboration of the California Voter Foundation, the Center for Governmental Studies, and the UCLA School of Law.

Specifically, the study found fault with a section of Maine campaign finance law that gives candidates a choice on whether to file their campaign finance reports electronically.

Maine is one of 16 states with voluntary electronic filing, a system by which candidates can forgo filing traditional paper reports and instead submit information via computer.

The report gave better grades to the 20 states that require electronic filing, generally considered an easier way to post campaign finance reports immediately online instead of waiting for workers to enter the data manually from the paper reports to the Web site.

Upon reviewing the report’s findings, state officials on Tuesday were at times defensive and at times conciliatory.

Jonathan Wayne, director of the State of Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, argued that while Maine’s overall grade might sound low, it placed the state roughly in the middle of the pack in terms of campaign finance disclosure.

He was quick to point out that Maine ranked a respectable 14th in the overall content of its campaign finance Web site, where people can track campaign contributions by donor, recipient and a number of other categories.

“That’s something I think we can be proud of,” he said.

Wayne said the state’s low grade – an F – in the area of electronic filing unfairly represented a “one-size-fits-all” approach on the part of the study’s authors.

“That might not be appropriate for Maine, which is not an affluent state and has a citizen Legislature,” Wayne said of the electronic filing option, which only became available in Maine in 2002.

Wayne, however, had no apology for the study’s other major finding that parts of the commission’s Web site were difficult to navigate. On Tuesday, he outlined a plan to make the campaign finance filings more readily available for public inspection.

Wayne said he would recommend to the commission that it end its relationship with the Indiana company currently running the site so state elections staff can assume more direct control over how the information is presented.

Washington received top honors in the study, garnering the only A grade, an A-minus.

Illinois ranked second with a B grade, followed by Massachusetts with a C-plus.

Seventeen states received failing grades including New Hampshire and Vermont.

The report is online at www.campaigndisclosure.org/gradingstate.