The 2014 civic elections financial disclosure statements were released this week and offered few big surprises on the New West front.
Labour unions contributed big bucks to campaigns of the mayoral, councillor and school trustee candidates who had been endorsed by the labour council, and developers opened their wallets the former mayor.
I’m hoping to have a chance to review some of the disclosures from other communities to see how election campaign costs in New West compare to other cities – but, truth be told, I’m not sure I have it in me.
I remember the days of going to city hall and going through all of the disclosure statements page by page, writing down all of the pertinent details in my notebook. In the 2011 election, the city posted all the documents online.
This year marked the first time that Elections B.C. was tasked with the job of collecting and posting election disclosures from candidates from across B.C. With more than 3,600 disclosures to deal with, I’m impressed with the speed that the reports were posted online.
The readability of the online documents? Not so impressive.
In one case, the numbers in a certain mayoral candidate’s forms came across as a series of dots, rather than actual figures. When none of my colleagues could makes sense of the numbers, I had to contact Elections B.C., which thankfully responded very quickly to my pleas for help.
I only pestered Elections B.C. for clarification on the most pertinent information I needed, but there were numerous examples of next-to-impossible numbers and words in the disclosure statements. While my eyesight isn’t as great as it once was, I can’t be the only person who struggled to read these documents online.
While I appreciate being able to access the documents online, I hope efforts are made to make the documents more readable in future elections. Whether that means requiring candidates to use a Sharpie when completing their forms or improving the scanning techniques, I don’t know.
The province introduced a number of changes related to local election reform, with goals including enhancing transparency and increasing accessibility. Illegible disclosure statements do little to support those goals.
