Technology has made information gathering much easier in today’s world.  To our collective credit, government has come a long way in recent years to increase transparency and ensure public information and documents are more readily accessible to the public.  An additional step would continue these efforts.
 
Please join me in co-sponsoring legislation amending Title 65 (Public Officers) to:

• Require statewide officials and members of the General Assembly to electronically file financial interest statements with the Ethics Commission.
• Require the Ethics Commission to create an email system to provide notification when new or amended statements are posted.

 
While this may be a technical change, perhaps small in scope, our public documents should be available with a keystroke and not otherwise limiting.  Our annual Ethics Commission filing should be viewed as an ‘open book’ with ease of access.
 
This bill was last introduced in the 2019-2020 Session as Senate Bill 402. 

Thank you for your consideration.

Statutes/Laws affected:
Printer's No. 0567: 65-1104