James L. Rosica, ()
In campaign finance, what goes in must come out.
Contributions and who gives them get all the scrutiny but less attention is paid to expenditures: What the campaigns do with all the money they take in.
In Florida, candidates and committees are required to list only the most basic information about their expenses despite the tightening of campaign finance laws in recent years.
To be sure, most spending is self-explanatory, such as postage, printing, office supplies and campaign ads.
But others aren’t quite as obvious at first glance.
For example, the biggest ticket item on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s list of re-election expenditures is $50,000 to a Miami company called The Factor Inc., for “consulting.”
Bondi, a Tampa native, was first elected in 2010.
The public should get as much disclosure for expenditures as for contributions, argues Pete Quist, research director for the nonprofit, nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics.
An upcoming project by the institute involves seeing how much those on the receiving end of campaign money try to influence laws and policy, just as some contributors do.
Information about “campaign expenditures are often more gray than the contributions we see,” Quist said. “Expenditures are reported just as bare descriptions without any standardized requirement for specific details.”
So campaigns often will list a description that simply says “consulting,” a common expense.