{"id":10,"date":"2006-09-12T23:39:42","date_gmt":"2006-09-13T03:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/archives\/10"},"modified":"2006-09-12T23:39:42","modified_gmt":"2006-09-13T03:39:42","slug":"parsing-the-ocpf-filings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/parsing-the-ocpf-filings\/","title":{"rendered":"Parsing the OCPF Filings"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most annoying things about running for office was (and is) the paperwork. The financial filings are the worst. I have spent many hours trying to figure out what needed to be on which form. Is that a gift-in-kind? Or is that an expense? Or is it a liability that will be expensed later? Does it need a line item, or is that uncategorized? Or is it a reimbursement of a past liability? Yech. If I was elected, I’d probably try to dismantle the Office of Campaign and Political Finance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But, the data is there, and I like data. I review the filings of local candidates when they occur, like they did last week in their pre-primary filing. Unfortunately, the OCPF website doesn’t permit you to link into actual reports. They make you re-run the search every time you want to review the data, which I find inconvenient. You can check out the database<\/a> yourself. For Arlington residents, I think Senator Havern’s recent report is the most interesting.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Check out the database<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. Click “Candidates.”<\/li>\n
  3. Enter “Havern” for the last name.<\/li>\n
  4. Click the “09\/11\/2006 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Pre-primary Report (ND)”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    From the report you can determine that his campaign received $38,595 so far this year. If you click “Schedule A (Receipts)” you can see that $16,775 of that came from PACs, lobbyists, and unions, plus an additional $3100 from lawyers. You get to draw your own conclusions from that information.<\/p>\n

    There is also one real curiousity on that form. He lists a $100 contribution from the “Alcohol Beverage Control Commission” which, as far as I can tell, is actually a state agency<\/a>. I should go for a bike ride and see what is at 90 Homer Street in Boston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    One of the most annoying things about running for office was (and is) the paperwork. The financial filings are the worst. I have spent many hours trying to figure out what needed to be on which form. Is that a gift-in-kind? Or is that an expense? Or is it a liability that will be expensed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arlington","category-massachusetts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}