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Ethics staff demos interactive campaign finance dashboards used by reporters and the public
Summary
The commission received a live demonstration of the Ethics Commission—s campaign finance dashboards from EDDA analyst Tyler Field, who showed how the site aggregates filings, surfaces contributors and independent expenditures, and presents public financing participation; commissioners and users asked for more frequent updates and search-by-contributor features.
Tyler Field, an analyst in the Ethics Commission—s Electronic Disclosure and Data Analysis division, demonstrated the commission—s campaign finance dashboards and described how they transform thousands of paper filings into interactive visualizations that reporters, candidates and voters now use to understand who is funding San Francisco elections.
Field walked the commission through multiple views: contributions and expenditures by committee, public financing participation, individual-expenditure detail, and contributor location maps. He showed how the tool aggregates filings from hundreds of committees (more than 2,000 filings in 2018) and converts them into searchable charts; he used a large $1,000,000 contribution as an example of the dashboard—s ability to surface high-dollar donors and related filings.
Commissioners pressed on update cadence and searchability. Field said the dashboards are updated daily during the 90-day election period and that users can search by ballot measure, candidate, or committee and also drill into individual contributors that appear as string-matched names. He acknowledged limitations in name matching ("John Smith" vs. variants) and accepted a public suggestion to add an easy way to pull all filings tied to a single contributor.
Chair Chiu praised the dashboards as a powerful transparency tool. Executive staff and several public commenters recommended continued investment so the dashboards can be updated more frequently and offer contributor-level cross-referencing as requested by journalists and campaign managers.
After the presentation, commissioners discussed budget implications and asked staff to return with information about resources needed to maintain and expand the dashboards. The commission acknowledged the dashboards— role in enhancing disclosure and public access to campaign finance information.
