The State Auditor’s office issued a report criticizing the State Board of Elections’ failure to process campaign finance reports in a timely manner and hold late report filers accountable. Democracy NC has identified similar problems, including our May report pointing out that 42% of the campaign reports for the legislative winners in 2010 had not been entered into the Board’s database, the first step in its review process. The State Auditor’s report reveals the scope of the problem: “At the time of our audit, there were over 30,000 reports that had not been audited. Some of these unaudited reports date back to the 2000 election. The receipts and expenditures for approximately 10,000 of those reports had not been entered in the campaign finance database, which is necessary before an audit can be performed since many of the audit procedures are performed electronically. For the 2010 election cycle . . . 6,578 of the 10,931 reports still had not been entered in the database and therefore had not been audited within the timeframe required.”
Why is the backlog so large? A blog entry and editorial by the Greensboro News & Record suggest it may be purposeful negligence by state legislators who don’t want their reports dissected. Except for a brief period after the conviction of House Speaker Jim Black, the State Board has been chronically understaffed and underfunded by the General Assembly. Meanwhile, some legislators want to merge the campaign finance section into a combined agency with the State Ethics Commission and lobbyist regulation office of the Secretary of State. They better be prepared to put up a lot more money to make it possible for all of these duties to be properly fulfilled.
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