A couple of months ago, I expressed my dismay that the Secretary of State has failed to provide New Mexicans with a campaign finance reporting website that is easy to use and more importantly easy to search. I’ve also found it quite troubling that time and time again our Governor conveniently prefers task forces to action when it comes to solving the biggest problems facing New Mexico.
Since I’ve never been one to sit around and just gripe about problems without trying to solve them, I’ve gone ahead and launched EthicalReporting.com – the campaign finance reporting blog for politicians with nothing to hide.
I didn’t have the benefit of a task force to come up with the idea. Nor has it required me three years of development time and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to launch the site. Truth be told, from concept to execution, the whole thing took me a little under 20 hours over three weeks time and cost less than $200. And no, I’m not a programmer.
Check out the site and you’ll see that a member of the Governor’s ethics task force, State Representative Kathy McCoy (R) – my representative, is the first politician to take advantage of real time reporting. She is reporting her information now, despite the fact that she is not legally required to do so until October.
Representative McCoy is demonstrating that which we all know to be true: Ethical behavior begins with a personal commitment, not a legislative action. It is my sincere hope that many others on both sides of the aisle will follow suit and do the right thing. The technology is there for real-time reporting. Let’s see who takes advantage of it.
Please help me spread the word by encouraging those who represent or are seeking to represent you to take the first step in restoring public confidence in our campaign system. A step that is not legally required, but that is simply the right thing to do.