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This from a media-oriented source designed to help journalists cover
campaign finance issues in the U.S. - SLC
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 11:51:57 -0500
From: "Aron Pilhofer(IRE/CFIC)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: CFIC Weekly Update
Campaign Finance Information Center Weekly Update
http://www.campaignfinance.org
~~~~~~~~~
The Campaign Finance Information Center (a program of IRE) is dedicated to
helping journalists follow the campaign money trail -- on the national,
state and local levels - and other important election issues. Through
seminars, our Tracker newsletter and Web site, CFIC provides a forum on the
latest developments in which journalists can learn from one another.
~~~~~~~~~
June 27, 2002
*********
Training:
Regional CAR/Campaign Finance Workshop
June 29-30, Minneapolis, MN.
Campaign finance will be THE story of Election 2002 -- is your news
organization ready? If not, this workshop will help you get there. Trough
classroom and hands-on computer-assisted reporting training, the workshop
will provide you with the knowledge and skills to get a jump on the
competition.
This program is ideal for journalists (print and broadcast) who will be
covering a federal, state or local race in 2002. It will be tailored to
reporters in the upper Midwest, but is open to all.
Among the topics the workshop will cover:
- Current campaign finance laws and loopholes campaigns use to skirt them
- What documents are available for both federal and state candidates, and
where to find them on deadline
- What to expect when campaign finance reform kicks in after the November
election
- How to work with federal and state campaign finance data, including how to
retrieve, import and analyze filings from the FEC's new electronic filing
system on deadline
The featured presenter is David Magleby, director of Brigham Young
University's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and one of the
country's leading experts on campaign finance.
The cost is $25 for IRE members, or $75 for non-members (registration plus a
one-year IRE membership). A schedule and registration is posted on IRE's
website, here: http://www.ire.org/training/minneapolis.html.
For more information, contact CFIC Director Aron Pilhofer at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
(202)362-3223.
*********
Story of the week:
State parties: The campaign finance backdoor?
The Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org), Center
for Responsive Politics (http://www.opensecrets.org) and The National
Institute on Money in State Politics (www.followthemoney.org) released the
results of
their analysis of fundraising and spending by state parties in the 2000
election, and the numbers are staggering.
State parties raised more than a half-billion dollars, of almost half of
which came in the form of unregulated soft money transfers from the national
party organizations. The Center for Public Integrity hand-keyed thousands of
pages of paper records from all 50 states to create the first comprehensive
database of money raised and spent by state party committees. The report and
a searchable database are online here: www.statesecrets.org.
*********
Other news:
Campaign finance reform: The devil in the details
Who says soft money is the thing of the past? Not the Federal Election
Commission, which last week approved a series of exceptions to the ban on
soft money required by the new campaign finance reform law.
The rules uphold restrictions on the national parties, which prevents them
from raising and spending soft money to help federal candidates directly.
But under what promises to be the most controversial of the commission's
decisions, parties will be allowed to form surrogate committees to conduct
soft money fundraising and spending on their behalf.
Already, advocacy groups are threatening lawsuits, claiming the bi-partisan
commission went beyond the letter of the new law. One thing is certain if
the new regulations stand: covering federal campaign finance will become a
good deal more complex after Nov. 6 when the new law kicks in.
Here is a link to the Washington Post article on the FEC actions:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29834-2002Jun22.html
California contract, campaign finance scandal continues
Gov. Gray Davis is not out of the woods by any means, reports the San Jose
Mercury News. Reporter Bill Nissenbaum notes that California state Attorney
General Bill Lockyer is still working on his criminal investigation into the
$95 million no-bid contract between the state and Oracle software, which
officials estimate exceeds the state's software needs by as much as $41
million.
Among the subjects of Nissenbaum's investigation is a $25,000 campaign
contribution to the governor from an Oracle lobbyist days after the contract
was signed. The story is here:
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/news/politics/3515624.htm
*********
Resources:
Federal Contracts and Federal Contribution Potential Matches
If you want to find out what sorts of stories you might cull from federal
databases, check out the CFIC federal contracts lookup here:
http://notes.ire.org/cfic/fpds/index.html. In 2000, the federal
government let more
than $200 billion in contracts, so how much are companies in your area
getting? This online lookup is one way to find out.
Enter the name of the company you're interested in and the database will
return any matching contract actions between fiscal year 1992 and 2000.
As an example we typed in Dynegy, the energy trading company and former
Enron competitor whose accounting practices have also come under question.
Dynegy had a number of substantial contracts with the US government,
including a $2.5 million deal with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Our site allows users to link contractors to campaign contributions they
have made through Power Search (http://notes.ire.org/cfic/powersearch),
our online
donor lookup. This search engine allows you to track the political cash flow
across several states in federal and state races. It includes who gives what
to which candidates, and sometimes how the candidates spend their donations.
It includes money flow to and from political action committees, candidate
committees and party committees. A quick check will show that Dynegy also is
a frequent contributor to political campaigns.
Through Power Search and Federal Contracts, reporters can begin to make
that important connection between contributor and recipient, and start to
answer the question why corporations give.
*********
More about CFIC:
Training
Our training provides keys to the nuances of campaign finance and its
influence on contracts, jobs and legislation. In our seminars we teach
journalists news gathering and database skills they need to do in-depth,
original reporting that goes far beyond the numbers. If you are interested
in a seminar, please contact me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] More about CFIC training
online here: http://www.campaignfinance.org/training.html
CFIC Update
Each week, the CFIC staff pulls together news and notes of interest to
working journalists. If you have a comment, question or an item you'd like
us to include, send us an email at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
TRACKER
Tracker is the center's quarterly newsletter dedicated to covering campaign
finance. Each issue contains stories written by reporters working with
campaign finance records. They share tips and tactics for tackling these
often complex pieces. Find it online here: www.campaignfinance.org/tracker/
Resource Center
The Campaign Finance Information Center collects stories that use campaign
finance records to show how private money influences public policy. We've
pulled the stories together into a database that is searchable by
publication, state and headline subject. We collect tip sheets written by
reporters covering campaign finance issues and an extensive list of sources
specializing in campaign finance. Find it online here:
http://www.campaignfinance.org/background.html. For related stories or
stories on
any topic, please go to http://www.ire.org/resourcecenter
Data
IRE's database library is the place to go to find FEC data. Each month, the
staff downloads the latest filings, updates the records and converts them
into easy-to-import tables. The database consists of campaign contribution
information on all candidates seeking federal office and on all federal
political action committees. Contact the library directly for more
information on these databases or databases on any topic:
http://www.ire.org/datalibrary/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aron Pilhofer
Director, Campaign Finance Information Center
Investigative Reporters and Editors
National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting
(202) 362-3223
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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