BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó






                         SENATE COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS 
                         AND CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS
                           Senator Lou Correa, Chair


          BILL NO:   SB 1001                            HEARING DATE: 
          4/19/12
          AUTHOR:    YEE                                ANALYSIS BY:  
             Darren Chesin
          AMENDED:   4/16/12
          FISCAL:    YES
          
                                     SUBJECT
           
          Political Reform Act: lobbyists and committees: fees
           
                                  DESCRIPTION  
          
           Existing law  , pursuant to the Political Reform Act of 1974 
          (PRA), requires the Secretary of State (SOS), in 
          consultation with the Fair Political Practices Commission 
          (FPPC), to provide online and electronic filing processes 
          for use by specified political committees, lobbyists, 
          lobbying firms, and lobbyist employers 
          Those processes must enable a user to comply with all 
          relevant disclosure requirements.  The SOS must also make 
          all the data filed available on the Internet for public 
          viewing in an easily understood format.  This online 
          reporting and disclosure system is commonly referred to as 
          the Cal-Access system.

           Existing law  requires all state candidates and state 
          political committees who are required to file campaign 
          reports to file those reports online or electronically if 
          the cumulative amount of contributions received, 
          expenditures made, loans made, or loans received is $25,000 
          or more.

           Existing law  requires that lobbying firms and lobbyist 
          employers register with the SOS, and authorizes the SOS to 
          charge each lobbying firm and lobbyist employer a fee of up 
          to $25 per year for each lobbyist required to be listed on 
          its registration statement.  Currently, the SOS charges $25 
          every  two  years.
           
          Existing law  provides that if any person, candidate or 









          committee files an original statement of economic interest 
          (SEI), campaign statement or report after any deadline 
          imposed by the PRA, that filer, in addition to any other 
          penalties or remedies established by the PRA, is subject to 
          a penalty of $10 per day after the deadline until the 
          statement or report is filed to the officer with whom the 
          statement or report is required to be filed.  This penalty 
          need not be enforced by the filing officer if on an 
          impartial basis he or she determines that the late filing 
          was not willful and that enforcement of the penalty will 
          not further the purposes of the PRA, except that no penalty 
          may be waived if certain statements or reports are not 
          filed within specified time periods.  The filing officer 
          must deposit any funds received under this section into the 
          general fund of the jurisdiction of which he or she is an 
          officer. 
           This bill  would increase the maximum amount of the lobbying 
          firm and lobbyist employer fee to $50 per year and would 
          also require each political committee that receives 
          contributions totaling $1,000 or more in a calendar year 
          (recipient candidate, general purpose, ballot measure 
          committees, etc.) to pay a similar fee of not more than $50 
          per year to the SOS.  

           This bill  would require the FPPC to adjust these fee limits 
          on December 1 of each even-numbered year to reflect any 
          increase in the Consumer Price Index and to round the 
          adjustment to the nearest $5.
          
           This bill  would establish the Political Disclosure, Access, 
          and Transparency Account in the State Treasury in which 
          would be deposited all monies collected for lobbying, 
          lobbyist employer, and political recipient committee 
          registration fees as well as $10 per day late filing 
          penalties.  This bill would further declare that it is the 
          intent of the Legislature that monies deposited into this 
          account be expended for the maintenance, repair, and 
          improvement of the SOS's Cal-Access online disclosure 
          program.

                                    BACKGROUND  

           Cal-Access Issues and Status According to the SOS  :  Created 
          in 1999, Cal-Access is a database and filing system the SOS 
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          has used to make much of the lobbying and campaign finance 
          information available online at no cost to users.

          Cal-Access is a suite of applications developed in 13 
          different programming languages which, until recently, ran 
          the system on a server cluster and associated components 
          that are more than 12 years old, using an uncommon version 
          of the Unix operating system.  While the SOS has the 
          funding to maintain the existing hardware and software, 
          finding parts and qualified people to do the maintenance on 
          such outdated equipment has been increasingly difficult.

          The Cal-Access system went down November 30, 2011 was 
          restored December 7, 2011 went down December 9, 2011 and 
          was restored again on December 30, 2011.  The causes of the 
          outages were layered and complex and no quick fix was 
          available.  

          The recovery efforts pursued in December should stabilize 
          Cal-Access and enable it to continue running, but the 
          system can never be made stronger or patched with new 
          features.  Any attempt to upgrade or modernize Cal-Access 
          could be as risky, time-consuming, and expensive as 
          developing and deploying a new system.  Even the December 
          work to restore Internet availability of Cal-Access will 
          not last forever.  It is highly likely that Cal-Access will 
          require more robust servers in the next three to four years 
          simply to continue providing access to the ever-growing 
          volume of information.
           
          The cost of an entirely new system and the speed with which 
          it can be deployed will depend on many factors and 
          ultimately can only be borne out through the state's IT 
          procurement process, which history has shown to be lengthy 
          and expensive.  Before the Cal-Access outage began on 
          November 30, the SOS was looking at existing commercial 
          off-the-shelf (COTS) products, as well as systems used by 
          other states to prepare a feasibility study report (FSR) - 
          the project blueprint that is the required precursor for an 
          IT project and subject to approval by state control 
          agencies.  Any consideration of an FSR, along with the 
          subsequent legislative and gubernatorial review of any 
          budget change proposal to conduct a procurement, would take 
          into account the replacement of Cal-Access in the context 
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          of the two major IT procurements - VoteCal and California 
          Business Connect - that the SOS is currently conducting.  

                                     COMMENTS  
          
            1. According to the author  , Cal-Access, the disclosure 
             website that provides financial information supplied by 
             state candidates, donors, and lobbyists, among others, 
             has had a slew of technical issues recently that have 
             resulted in a lack of access to this information by the 
             public. This information is essential to ensuring 
             transparency and accountability in affairs that directly 
             impact the people of this state. This bill seeks to 
             raise additional funds to be used on the maintenance of 
             the Cal-Access website to ensure that this information 
             is continuously available as it was intended to be by 
             raising the fee for lobbying firms and lobbyist 
             employers to $50 per year. This bill will also require 
             the Fair Political Practices Commission to adjust this 
             fee on December 1 of each even-numbered year to reflect 
             any increase in the Consumer Price Index and to round 
             the adjustment to the nearest $5.

            2. How Much Money Would this Bill Raise  ?  The committee 
             estimates that between lobbyist registrations, committee 
             registrations, and late fines, this bill could provide 
             approximately $600,000 per year for the proposed 
             Cal-Access account.   
           
                                    POSITIONS  

          Sponsor: California Common Cause 

           Support: California Newspaper Publishers Association
                    Fair Political Practices Commission
                    
           Oppose:  Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association





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