Loupe one hundred dollars banknotes on keyboard. Finding financial earnings on the internet conceptWhile California campaigns and election regulators like the California Fair Political Practices Commission have generally succeeded in providing transparency to the contribution side of the campaign finance ledger, they’ve fallen comparatively short when it comes to expenditures.
Image by Cagkan SayinLobbyist employers, otherwise known as special interests, paid firms a little more than $77 million to lobby California state government in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to a Capitol Weekly analysis of lobbying firm reports. That figure doesn’t include all of the funds spent on lobbying during the fourth quarter. Lobbying firm disclosure reports don’t include wages and expenses for in-house lobbyists, for example.
Outnumbered, image by Hernan E. SchmidtDuring one unremarkable time period of four weeks, the number of political filings was roughly 12 times greater than the total number of people working for the agency charged with overseeing the accuracy and legality of those very filings. And that was a slow month.
Photo illustration, political cash on the move: IQoncept, via ShutterstockWhen California introduced its Cal-Access campaign finance website, “There was nothing like it in the country,” said Rob Lapsley, who was under-Secretary of State in 2000, the year the campaign disclosure tool made its debut. Fast forward 15 years: What was once cutting edge is now obsolete. “The current system is broken, literally.”