BILL ANALYSIS |
C.S.H.B. 2211 |
By: Naishtat |
Elections |
Committee Report (Substituted) |
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Candidates for judicial office collect and report campaign finance information, and the Texas Ethics Commission maintains these disclosures for certain judges on its Internet website. Interested parties note that while certain other finance reports are maintained by each county, most of these reports are available to the public only through requests to the county clerk. The parties assert that this is a slow and inefficient way to provide access to the information and that it places an unnecessary burden on the county clerk. The parties suggest, in the interest of promoting government transparency and creating uniformity among the procedures governing the disclosure of certain reportable information, that all such reports filed in connection with certain county judicial offices be made available online in counties that already maintain an Internet website. C.S.H.B. 2211 seeks to address this issue.
|
||||||||||||
RULEMAKING AUTHORITY
It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.
|
||||||||||||
ANALYSIS
C.S.H.B. 2211 amends the Election Code to require a report filed under statutory provisions relating to political reporting that is filed with a county clerk by a justice of the peace, a candidate for the office of justice of the peace, a judge of a county court at law, or a candidate for the office of judge of a county court at law to be made available to the public on the county's Internet website if the county maintains an Internet website. The bill requires the county to make the report available for free and prohibits the county from requiring a person to register with the county to view the report. The bill's provisions apply to a required report that is due on or after January 1, 2014.
|
||||||||||||
EFFECTIVE DATE
September 1, 2013.
|
||||||||||||
COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL AND SUBSTITUTE
While C.S.H.B. 2211 may differ from the original in minor or nonsubstantive ways, the following comparison is organized and highlighted in a manner that indicates the substantial differences between the introduced and committee substitute versions of the bill.
|
||||||||||||
|