Orlando Sentinel Aaron Deslatte column
By Aaron Deslatte, Orlando Sentinel | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
The law raised the contribution limit from
So far this year, those changes have had largely symbolic effects.
This year, of the 11,400 donors to
The elimination of slush funds had little effect, either, because lawmakers simply created a different kind of fund and transferred their dollars into new bank accounts.
One glaring loophole that has had an effect is not requiring that state political parties and "leadership funds" disclose as quickly which companies and causes were filling their coffers. This has been a blow to transparency.
The law required candidates and interest-groups to start filing monthly reports, but the state parties and other funds controlled by legislative leaders don't have to do that. So donors can funnel money through them if they want to avoid disclosing their funding as quickly.
As a result, the deadline for filing February campaign reports last week allows us to see that
But that doesn't tell us how much money flooded into the state Republican and Democratic party coffers in the weeks ahead of the legislative session, when companies, interests and wealthy donors will want maximum sway. What we do see from February data is that party transfers make up one of the biggest chunks of cash being moved from one place to another.
Candidates, their committees and interest groups still have to disclose the party money they received. For instance, the
We can see Agriculture Commissioner
We can also see
As we already reported, Democratic gubernatorial candidate
But both sides are only telling half of the story.
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