New Florida law gives us less campaign finance reporting, less transparency

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August 10th came and went and there were no campaign finance reports filed in Florida for state candidates. Or for county candidates. Or for city candidates.

Did anybody else notice this had happened?

A new quarterly schedule for reporting campaign finance collections and expenditures has replaced Florida’s long-standing monthly reporting for state and local candidates. Now they are treated just like federal candidates, with reports due the 10th days of January, April, July and October.

June was the last month for which monthly reports had to be filed under the old rule.

The new rule, which apparently has gone largely unnoticed, is one of the 27 changes in the “sweeping voting reform” package pushed through by Republicans in this year’s session. It takes some nerve calling it a reform package. What it really does is makes it harder to follow the money.

Read related: Miami’s Alex Diaz de la Portilla raises more than $1.2 mil in four months

Senate Bill 7050 was custom crafted for Gov. Ron DeSantis, most importantly, by removing any doubt there was on the “resign to run” law for presidential hopefuls. No, he doesn’t have to resign. It’s clear now. The amendment to the elections code also adds difficulties for third-party organizations to register voters and removes the requirement of publishing certain voting information in the local newspaper, when the county website will do just fine. It also makes a third-degree felony to “harass” election workers.

What on this green Earth could be the public policy benefit of having these reports filed quarterly rather than monthly? The only benefit is to the candidates who can hide how much money they have and from who? Even political action committees are apparently spared. None has filed their July report.

Read related: Sabina Covo leads Miami District 2 candidates in campaign fundraising

We’re lucky that the deadlines for candidates in elections are still standing, according to Roberto Rodriguez, the new spokesman at the Miami-Dade Elections Department. That means that we don’t have to wait until January to learn what the city of Miami candidates spend on their Nov. 7 races. Candidates in this year’s municipal races still have to file four campaign finance reports on the 60th, 25th, 11th and fourth day prior to Nov. 7.

Next year, candidates have to file those four reports prior to the primary and prior to the general election.

Unless the legislature decides to do away with that little inconvenience in the next session.

  campaign financing, Ron DeSantis