Introduction
Campaign Finance
Spending Reform
Long ago, a campaign was initiated by citizens expressing a true desire to serve the public and address the concerns of their communities. The only thing standing between their desire and reality, is the election process.
Traditionally, the vehicle of getting a candidate's message out has been through yard-signs, buttons, bumper stickers and campaign literature. Today's campaigns have become much more than just literature, as it involves costly advertising through the radio, television and newsprint media, which created the need for fund-raising. This has made campaigning a high-stakes game in order to gain the name recognition, thus increasing the electability of a candidate.
There are two aspects of a campaign reform, the first of which centers around fund-raising. Over the years, the increased need for financing a campaign has created an environment with campaign contributors which influence government contracts and public policy-making issues.
These campaign contributions come with the complexities of how to "follow the money", or rather the influence. As you will soon discover, funds contributed to one political committee can funnel its way across the state to other political committees, making it virtually impossible to follow the source.
Along the way, campaign transactions have gone far astray from the vague laws governing them. In our research, we will focus on the 'expenditures' aspect of campaign reform. We hope you will find the issue of campaign finance/spending, as much of a concern as we do.
What is a legal campaign expenditure?
After visiting the "campaign expenditure" link, you will realize the Department of State's definition of what is an allowable expenditure. These parameters in which define this term are vague, leaving a wide range of gray area that is subject to abuse.
The following link contains excerpts of actual expense reports of Western Pennsylvania's Legislators filed with the State & County Elections Department. We have condensed several hundred pages of each legislator from the last five years to just 2 to 3 pages. These reports illustrate questionable expenditures, some of which have been written as contributions.
At the end of each Legislator's expense statement there is an "At Issue" hypertext link. This link points out specific expenditures contained in the report that we raise issue to their legitimacy.
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