Published: 05-28-01
By Karen Robb
FEDERAL TIMES STAFF WRITER
Information from the Federal Election Commission on campaign contributions is unreliable because of the agency’s reliance on unwieldy reporting forms and outdated information systems, according to a watchdog group and former agency employees.
Information the Federal Election Commission reports about campaign contributions to candidates for federal office is confusing, difficult to access and riddled with inaccuracies, according to the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) based in Washington, D.C.
Former FEC employees said many problems have simple solutions, but little has been done to improve the disclosure procedures at the agency.
They blamed the inaction on a lack of interest in agency operations by the six politically appointed commissioners that oversee agency operations as well as resistance among career staff to install modern technology.
“The mechanics of disclosure are not interesting to the commissioners,” said Kent Cooper, vice president of TRKC Inc., an Internet technology consulting group in Washington, D.C. Cooper was assistant staff director for disclosure at FEC for 22 years. He left in 1997.
The FEC would not respond by presstime to questions from Federal Times about the procedures and policies criticized in the report.
“There are issues raised here that are quite complex and do not lend themselves to simplistic and brief answers in a phone conversation,” said Ron Harris, FEC spokesman, in a written statement.
POGO’s report found numerous discrepancies in FEC’s published information on campaign contributions given to members of Congress in 1997 and 1998. Information the agency collected from political action committees about contributions matched information collected from candidates in only six out of 544 cases.
In 232 cases, candidates reported receiving less than the amounts political action committees reported giving them. In 306 cases, the candidates reported receiving more money than the political action committees reported.
The report, “At the Federal Election Commission Things Just Don’t Add Up,” was completed in March and discussed by POGO and former FEC officials May 22. Meanwhile, Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on government efficiency, financial management and intergovernmental relations, told Federal Times he plans to hold hearings on the FEC’s problems later this year.
The report does not uncover any deliberate misreporting on the part of the candidates or political-action committees. Instead, investigators found discrepancies caused by FEC’s failure to compare and reconcile information from candidates to information from donors, confusing forms, and a lack of clear standards for identifying political action committees.
For instance, former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., reported accepting $138,000 from political action committees in 1998 on the detail page of the FEC reporting form, but because he did not fill out the summary page of the form, FEC reported on its Web site he had not accepted PAC money.
Failure to update the database on its public Web site also causes misinformation about candidates’ campaign contributions to be disseminated.
In 1998, the Web site showed Horn accepted contributions from political action committees even though he had reported to the agency he had returned all contributions from such groups.
The information on FEC’s Web site, even when accurate, is difficult to interpret because of the use of different names for political action committees, the report said. In one case, candidates reported accepting contributions from the Allied-Signal Political Action Committee, but the group reported its contributions under the name of Honeywell International Inc., which had merged with Allied-Signal.
To identify which PACs contributed to which candidates, investigators had to compare committee addresses provided by candidates with addresses the committees themselves provided. The process took 2,000 hours to complete, according to the report.
The agency provides political action committees with identification numbers but does not ask the committees to give those numbers to candidates when making contributions. The report offered an easy remedy: Require political action committees to record their ID numbers on checks they send candidates.
Reluctance by the commission to use modern technology also contributes to the problem, said Tony Raymond an employee at TRKC Inc. and a former Web master at the agency.
“They are still using a COBOL-based mainframe computer designed in 1980 simply because that is what they are comfortable with,” Raymond said. He said the computer that still uses key-punch cards is prone to errors.
The technology also makes it difficult to compare information in separate databases.
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