The Secretary of State’s proposal to upgrade California’s campaign and lobbying database got a boost Monday from an Assembly budget subcommittee.
Lawmakers voted 4-0 to approve $1.8 million toward the rebuild of the antiquated online campaign and lobbying database known as Cal-Access. That is $1 million more than the administration has requested to complete the next step of the project.
The additional money is intended to move the project beyond preliminary development and through the Request For Proposal issuance stage, according to the Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 4 on State Administration.
“I believe this is money well spent,” Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, a member of the subcommittee, told his fellow lawmakers.
The current online portal on the Secretary of State’s website is intended to show the public who contributes campaign money, receives campaign money and how the money is spent. It also lists lobbyists, who hired them and how they are being paid. But searching the information can be cumbersome and it is far from user-friendly.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, are promoting legislation that would require the secretary of state’s office to create a data-driven, rather than a form-based database that adheres to prevailing standards for search and open data.
Padilla wants to run the project through his own office, bypassing the Department of Technology and their project approval process required for large IT projects. In the Senate, budget lawmakers earlier this month expressed reservations about such a plan, noting a string of high-profile IT project failures in recent years.
Meanwhile, Hertzberg has asked the Legislature to fund the entire project outright at $13.5 million, giving the Secretary of State the authority to develop the project however he sees fit.
