Local Campaign Finance Transparency Bill Faces Hurdles Over $1 Million Technology Cost

By Nathan Bernard, Maine Beacon:

A bill requiring municipal candidates and PACs in Maine’s three largest cities to disclose their campaign finance reports to the public passed the Maine House and Maine Senate this month but is facing concern over its opaque $1 million fiscal note for “software upgrades.”

The proposal, LD 1658, sponsored by Rep. Grayson Lookner (D-Portland), is a response to national groups spending exorbitant amounts of capital to influence local elections.

In Maine, municipal clerks in towns with more than 15,000 people already collect campaign finance reports from candidates and committees but are not required to make these reports accessible to the public. The new regulations would change that, requiring cities and towns with over 30,000 people — Portland, Lewiston and Bangor — to publicly post finance reports on their town website within two days of filing.

In addition, under the bill, the Maine State Ethics Commission would take over the duty of managing, reviewing and approving committee and candidate registrations and finance reports for Maine’s three largest cities. This work used to be done by the municipal clerks, who support Lookner’s bill.

“In 2019 and 2020, in Portland specifically, there were expensive municipal races that attracted lots of out of state, national interests to spend money trying to alter the political landscape in their favor,” Lookner told Beacon. “Specifically, Airbnb in the 2020 election used their email lists, aggressive campaigning and spending. It was an outrage, and the city of Portland didn’t have the capacity to record that campaign spending and make it available to the public. It was clear then that the state has a role to play.”

“It’s a matter of capacity and expertise,” Lookner added. “Portland, and other municipalities in Maine, don’t have the expertise to stay on top of the finance reports. The state ethics office does though. The city clerks want this help…And without their support the bill wouldn’t have passed.”

While LD 1658 did pass in the House and Senate, it wasn’t without opposition. Critics specifically cited the $1 million estimate the commission put forward for “software upgrades” to handle the additional filings and reporting requirements.

The Ethics Commission executive director Jonathan Wayne provided details on the $1 million tech proposal to Beacon. The cost estimate is currently being driven by a software company called Civix — an out-of-state big tech firm owned by a private equity fund named HKW. Civix previously worked with the commission to build and maintain their campaign finance website, mainecampaignfinance.com.

When the commission asked Civix to provide an estimate to add the additional municipal candidate filings to the current e-filing system, the company responded with an estimated cost of $1 million, Wayne said. They claimed the system needed a “major upgrade,” which wasn’t envisioned when the e-filing software was first implemented in 2018, he added.

“When the commission emailed Civix to provide further details justifying the $1 milion estimate, Civix commented that adding municipal candidates and PACs to the existing software would be a project that Civix had ‘never done before’ and the cost of $1 million was intended as a ‘safe estimate,’” Wayne said. “Civix added it would need to charge the commission for the effort to provide a more precise estimate because it would require many hours to examine the current code and its structure.”

Wayne noted the commission “wasn’t comfortable” paying Civix to conduct additional research for their cost estimate. He also said the software cost “could be less than $1 million” if the commission opens a competitive bidding process for the project. The commission could not provide their own estimate because they “lack the IT expertise” to do so, he said.

Civix did not reply to Beacon’s request for comment regarding their proposal to upgrade Maine’s e-filing system.

Lookner expressed concern with Civix’s “safe estimate” of $1 million given the project’s parameters, especially because inflated fiscal notes are often used as a method to kill legislative proposals.

“A lot of public entities are subject to arbitrary costs and being taken advantage of by these technology vendors who do not have the public interest in mind,” Lookner said. “Slapping a steep fiscal note on a bill is a way to kill it. I think $1 million is an arbitrary and inflated number. But I as the sponsor and proponent don’t have a say, it’s the state agency who creates the fiscal note.”

The bill will face further votes in the House and Senate.

“People deserve to know who’s spending money influencing their municipal elections and it’s unprecedented that these national groups are coming in to spend this kind of money,” Lookner said of the need to pass the measure. “This bill is a start, but it’s a big problem. And this will begin to give us more information on this spending.”

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