As your mother may have told you, you are known by the company you keep.
The same applies to politicians. The public can learn a great deal about a politician by the donors who give him or her money.
But voters trying to track politics in Sacramento County will have a hard time. Not surprisingly, the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors doesn’t care to make it easy.
The state of California, and several cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento, post donations to candidates and incumbents online in searchable form.
Sacramento supervisors refuse to make campaign donations available on the county’s Web site.
The Voter Registration and Elections Department has requested money to upgrade its site for years.
The Bee’s county government reporter, Robert Lewis, reported that the cost would be modest, perhaps $50,000. But as Lewis noted, an electronic system also would save labor costs. County workers spent 388 hours handling paper versions of the campaign finance statements in 2008.
It’s not that they don’t raise money. Supervisor Roger Dickinson, hoping to win a state Assembly seat, raised $102,000 in his last run for the board in 2006. Susan Peters raised $163,000 in 2008.
It is way past time that the Board of Supervisors enter the 21st century, check out these newfangled machines called computers and discover the Internet.
The board might find that there is public benefit by using the Internet to let a little sun shine on the way they do business. The public deserves no less.