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tecfiler

Utility to generate campaign finance filings for candidates/office-holders and specific purpose committees.

This project is in development.

For design information, please see the wiki: https://github.com/chip-rosenthal/tecfiler/wiki

Background

The requirements for candidate and lobbyist disclosures are set by the Texas Ethics Commission (TEC): http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/main/local.html

Local candidate and lobbyist disclosures are filed not with the State, but with the Austin City Clerk.

Clerk takes filings on paper (or PDF versions of the forms).

The filings are posted online but are not easily searchable: http://www.austintexas.gov/department/campaign-finance-reports

In April, the City Council passed an ordinance to create an online, searchable database of campaign and lobbyist filings: http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=169484

Initial staff estimates to implement have come back with: about 800K cost, about a year development, solution based on proprietary technology

In a meeting organized by Councilmember Morrison, city staff was open to the idea of a "civic sourced" effort to help reduce costs and time.

Some complexities not addressed:

  • There are additional forms, such as the treasurer filing and correction filings, that are not scoped at this time.

  • There are additional schedules that the City of Austin uses, that are not scoped in this discussion.

  • Local government can require electronic filings, but the process is going to need TEC approval.

TEC Forms

Form C/OH: Candidate/Office-Holder Campaign Finance Report http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/forms/coh.pdf

  • Schedule A: Political Contributions other than Pledges or Loans
  • Schedule B: Pledged Contributions
  • Schedule E: Loans
  • Schedule F: Political Expenditures
  • Schedule G: Political Expenditures Made from Personal Funds
  • Schedule H: Payment from Political Contributions to a Business of C/OH
  • Schedule I: Non-Political Expenditures made from Political Contributions
  • Schedule K: Interest Earned, Other Credits/Gains/Refunds, and Purchase of Investments
  • Schedule T: In-Kind Contribution or Political Expenditure for Travel Outside of Texas

Form SPAC: Specific-Purpose Committee Campaign Finance Report http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/forms/spac.pdf

  • Schedule A: Political Contributions other than Pledges or Loans
  • Schedule B: Pledged Contributions
  • Schedule C: Corporate or Labor Organization Contributions other than Pledges or Loans
  • Schedule D: Pledged Corporate or Labor Contributions
  • Schedule E: Loans
  • Schedule F: Political Expenditures
  • Schedule H: Payment from Political Contributions to a Busines of C/OH
  • Schedule I: Non-Political Expenditures made from Political Contributions
  • Schedule J: Political Contributions Returned to Committee
  • Schedule K: Interest Earned, Other Credits/Gains/Refunds, and Purchase of Investments
  • Schedule T: In-Kind Contribution or Political Expenditure for Travel Outside of Texas

TEC Automation and Import Format

The state provides free software for electronic filing with the state. The software can be used to generate reports for local filing, but does not support electronic filing locally.

The state software allows import of contributions and expenditures. Our tool will be modeled around this import format. It is documented in the TX-CFA Import Guide:

http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/whatsnew/ImportGuide.pdf

Development Status

There is currently a prototype "import engine" that would load CSV files in a standard form defined by the TEC, save them in a database, and (if desired) produce the standard TEC forms as PDFs.

Now that we've got a workable data model and PDF rendering tool, we'd like to build a web-based app. When complete, this will provide a complete solution for campaigns to file their financial reports, and provide public transparency to funds in the political system.

The import engine is written in ruby, and the web framework has been created in rails. They need to be merged.

Installation Notes

These instructions will help get the rails web framework installed. The import engine currently lives in the dm-import-engine branch.

git clone https://github.com/chip-rosenthal/tecfiler.git
cd tecfiler
bundle install

  • Copy config/database_example.yml to database.yml and edit it for your preferred db.

  • Copy config/email_example.yml to email.yml and edit it for your email server settings. Devise is configured to require account confirmation via email.

  • Migrate the database:

    bundle exec rake db:migrate

  • Start the web server:

    rails server

  • Go to http://localhost:3000/

  • Admin interface is at http://localhost:3000/admin (demo account login is "[email protected]" and password is "password")

Unit Tests

You can run the unit tests by running:

bundle exec rspec spec/models

At this time, only "models" tests are implemented. You may encounter failures if you try to run the entire "spec" suite.

You can perform all tests in a single spec file with a command such as:

bundle exec rspec spec/models/contribution_spec.rb

or a single test case by including a line number, such as:

bundle exec rspec spec/models/contribution_spec.rb:14

An in-memory database is used for test mode (RAILS_ENV="test"). This speeds up testing a bit. (But not enough, it still takes a painful amount of time to bring up the Rails stack for testing.)

Production Notes

Before running in a production environment, be sure to update the secret token to a unique value:

rake secret

Edit your config/initializers/secret_token.rb file to add the secret token:

TecfilerAr::Application.config.secret_token = '...some really long, random string...'