City committee reviews RFD demo of campaign finance, personal financial and lobby filing system; vendor outlines phased timeline

City council committee members received a demonstration of RFD’s online filing system for campaign finance reporting, personal financial statements (PFS), and a proposed lobbyist module that would be developed in a later phase.

Why this matters: staff said the system would centralize candidate, office‑holder and lobby filings in a Houston‑specific instance of an application RFD built for the Texas Ethics Commission. Committee members and vendor representatives discussed how filers create accounts, how administrative users manage filer IDs, data‑upload options, error checks and the vendor’s proposed schedule for phased implementation.

RFD’s Scott Glover, chief operating officer, described five modules the vendor proposed: campaign finance, personal financial statements, an administrative module for managing filers and filing cycles, and Houston‑specific lobby and financial disclosure modules. RFD representative Eric Dietz, director of systems development, walked committee members…