At the Ledge: Online filing advances; healthy food bid fails

A bill requiring constitutional, legislative and judicial candidates in Arkansas to use a searchable online campaign finance reporting system passed one committee Wednesday, while a bill requiring government food beneficiaries to purchase healthy foods died in another.

House Bill 1427 by Rep. Jana Della Rosa, R-Rogers, passed the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee on a voice vote.

The bill would require campaign finance reports to be filed online through a new system created through a $700,000 appropriation in the 2016 fiscal session. The reports would be searchable by citizens. Currently, citizens can see an individual’s campaign donations at the secretary of state’s website but cannot cross-reference the donations with other candidates or do a search to track overall donor giving.

“This new system has a nice interface with it that would be great for the public, but if we do not report into it, it’s useless to them because it will only have some of the information,” she said.

The bill requires a two-thirds vote because it modifies voter-initiated acts passed in 1990 and 1996. It would not apply to county or city candidates.

Della Rosa ran a similar bill during her first term in the Legislature in 2015, but it failed. Many legislators argued that the current online filing system is poorly constructed and makes mistakes. She said she saw a demonstration of the new system recently, and it works much better, meaning it will benefit both candidates and the general public.

“I tried to make it so it was a win-win,” she said.

Legislators have questioned what would happen to candidates who do not have reliable internet access. To address that concern, the bill allows candidates to file an affidavit saying they do not have access to sufficient technology and that the submission would amount to a “substantial hardship.”

Rep. Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville, asked if the bill contains a grace period if candidates run into last-minute problems with their internet connection. Della Rosa replied that candidates have 15 days to complete reports, and that is the grace period. Unlike the previous system, candidates can file individual donations as they occur rather than filing all at once in a report. She said problems could also occur if candidates wait until the last minute and use a fax machine that malfunctions.

“You’re always taking a risk if you wait until the last second to do it,” she said.

Graham Sloan, director of the Arkansas Ethics Commission, said the commission makes allowances for last-minute hardships and said the requirement will reduce the problems caused by illegible handwriting.

Rep. Charlotte Douglas, R-Alma, suggested a yearlong pilot program to allow candidates to become accustomed to the technology. She said she had received no comments from constituents about the bill and that there is no public outcry for more campaign finance transparency.

Candidates would have to choose at the beginning of an election cycle whether they are filing online or by paper and then must stick with the same method throughout the campaign cycle.

In other business, legislators in the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee voted against House Bill 1035, the Arkansas Healthy Food Improvement Act, by Rep. Mary Bentley, R-Perryville. The bill would have required the state to seek a waiver from the federal Department of Agriculture to limit Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to food products with sufficient nutritional value. The Department of Health would have chosen what foods would be allowed.

Bentley argued that the bill would help encourage healthier lifestyles in a state with high obesity rates that drive up the costs of health care.

“We can sit back and just do nothing, as we have for years on end, or we’re going to actually make a difference. … I’d love to see Arkansas milk in a sippy cup and not Coke or Mountain Dew,” she said.

Opponents have argued that the bill would be difficult for retailers and the government to administer and that it unfairly intruded into the decisions of SNAP beneficiaries.

Bentley said she would not give up on the issue but will not attempt to rerun the bill.