UPDATE: Four Council Candidates Do Early Finance Disclosure

Note: This article was corrected on September 1, 7:45 am, because Steve Ross's press release and statements to me by phone during our interview misrepresented Shanna Draheim as having specifically committed to his particular plan. While Draheim has decided to do early disclosure, she has not specifically agreed to the plan proposed by Ross because of the grassroots nature of her campaign, as noted in her statement below. Ross now tells me that Draheim "actually asked not to be included in the press release." (His follow-up statement to me can also be found below.) I regret that I assumed Ross had approval of his press release by those he named in it as participating in his early-disclosure plan. The headline was also changed from "Four Council Candidates Commit to Early Finance Disclsoure" to "Four Council Candidates Do Early Finance Disclosure."

Four of the six candidates running for East Lansing City Council are moving to disclose campaign contributions earlier than required by law so that voters can see, well in advance of the legally required disclosure date, who is contributing to their campaigns. The four are Erik Altmann, Shanna Draheim, Mark Meadows, and Steve Ross. (Six candidates are running for three open seats.)

I called Ross after receiving his press release today about this development. I asked him what motivated him to call on the other candidates to join him in this disclosure.

Ross told me he was motivated by articles published at ELi on campaign disclosure. He said those articles “spurred some discussions at the doors, when I’ve been canvassing.” Ross said that the article on donations to Susan Woods’ campaign had “stuck out” in particular. He said, “I talk to voters at the door. They read Eli, and they mention it to me.”

Ross said he was also motivated by Council’s decision, last November, not to pass an amendment to the ethics code that would have required real-time disclosure, at the Council table, if someone with financial business before Council had donated to a sitting Councilmember’s campaign. Council ultimately decided simply to add a link, at the City website, to the Ingham County Clerk’s website. Ross told me, “I don’t think the remedy they came to was sufficient. It put too much work on residents to do the research, where I think members of council should just disclose that information in the meetings.”

According to a press release from Ross, he wrote to the rest of the candidates last week, on August 25, and asked them to join him and Altmann in “posting to our respective websites the names, city of residency, and amount donated by each contributor, as well as occupation/employer information for those who have contributed more than $100 (as required by state law for our official campaign finance reports)” ahead of the public filing required by state law, which comes in late October.

The plan calls for candidates to “update this information each Monday until the election with any new contributions that may have come in over the week, and timestamp the page with the date of last update.” Ross says this will give voters, including absentee voters, information in a timely fashion.

Ross says he has not heard back from Jermaine Ruffin or Nathan Triplett, the other two candidates for Council. ELi has contacted them for comment but has not yet heard back from them. Ross says he hopes everyone will join in the weekly disclosure commitment.

“I don’t think there is such a thing as too much disclosure,” he told me. “I’m not suggesting there are conflicts but we deserve to know if there might be. When we’re spending taxpayer dollars the public has an interest to have this information at their hands.”

For more information about the election, see our page on general election information, our candidate profiles, and our page on campaign finance.

Statement from Shanna Draheim:

I am proud of the widespread financial support I have received for my campaign from family, friends, and colleagues. I am listing my campaign contributions—donors, dollar amounts, and residency—on my website and will continue to add to that information regularly through Election Day with a time stamp indicating when I last updated the list.  

I'm running a small, grassroots campaign.  I’m asking a lot of my volunteer treasurer, who works full time and has two active young children.  She’s making sure we meet all the campaign finance requirements in state law, and she’s happy to post contributions to my campaign as soon as possible after receiving them.  However, I’m not comfortable committing to an additional set of arbitrary rules, which Mr. Ross and Mr. Altmann laid down without asking for input from their fellow candidates.  I also will not expect or demand that anyone else voluntarily do more than state law prescribes.

These extra “rules” are ripe for small, innocent slip-ups in the midst of busy lives and could well take us down the same old path of finger-pointing politics that has become all too familiar in East Lansing.  Rather than worrying about the campaign contributions my fellow candidates are raising, I will invest my time and energy in talking with voters about East Lansing's future.  

Statement from Steve Ross, following further questions from me, after he called to tell me on the evening of August 31 (after my article was published) that Draheim objected to the representation in this article that she had joined Ross's particular plan:

Shanna agreed to post her campaign finance report online and do her best to keep it up to date but couldn't commit to updating it every Monday with a timestamp stating the last update, which is what Mark, Erik, and I agreed to do as was requested in the email last Tuesday.  I called you [after the article was published] because I just didn't want to put words in her mouth that she was going to have her most recent campaign finance information online each Monday if she is unable to.  The 4 of us (Mark, Erik, Shanna, me) posted our finance reports online right away, with the three of us (Mark, Erik, and me) committing to update them by Monday each week and include a timestamp.

She actually asked not to be included in the press release but I'm not sure there would have been a way to not include her since she did post her finance report online - 3 candidates posted finance reports, 2 candidates didn't respond, 1 candidate didn't want to be mentioned?  I'm not sure how that could have been written out in a press release.