Santa Monica Transparency Project

A group of concerned citizens formed the Santa Monica Transparency Project with the goal of making political contributions transparent so that election decisions are based on factual information. The findings were recently shared with the Santa Monica City Council to provide data on the campaign contribution limit for City Council elections. The group will continue to sort and organize campaign disclosure statements to determine sources of funds from special interest groups, businesses, and independent expenditure committees.

All candidates are required to submit campaign contribution reports (Form 460) to the City Clerk. These reports may be downloaded to a financial spreadsheet and sorted by category to look at the contributions by group, e.g. individuals, businesses and Political Action Committees (PACs). The contributions given to each candidate were sorted and tallied to figure totals donated by residents compared with total donations from outside sources.  Each candidate total was then tallied into a composite look at the overall political contributions.

 The information the City Clerk maintains may be found online here.