City makes it easier to follow the money

A new city website provides a convenient forum for members of the public to monitor where candidate and political action committee money comes from. All people seeking office, including current officeholders, and PACs, must file campaign finance reports with the city clerk. The new site, www.austintexas.gov/cityclerk/cfdi/index.cfm, contains all the data the city has received from reports submitted from 2016 to the present. Visitors can search for reports, contributions, and expenditures by candidate/organization name. In addition, the extracted data from the reports are available on the city’s Open Data Portal, and the new site has quick access links to the following datasets:

• Expenditures
• Contributions
• Loans
• Credits
• Transactions (all expenditure, contribution, loan, and credit data)
• Reports

“The new features of our campaign finance filing website will make the data more easily available to the public,” said City Clerk Jannette Goodall. “We believe this brings greater transparency to City government and municipal elections.” Filing schedules and requirements are found in Chapter 2-2 of the city code and at the Texas Ethics Commission website.