Campaign finance reports aren’t the only filings that city candidates can screw up.
About a quarter of the candidates running for city council seats and mayor have not provided financial disclosures to the City Secretary due in September.
Twenty-three out of 80 candidates did not submit disclosures such as sources of income, stocks and bonds, and property as of Oct. 10, nearly a month after the Sept. 11 deadline. An additional seven candidates had submitted their disclosures past deadline.
Candidates must report their assets and sources of money, according to the packet candidates received when they applied for a place on the ballot. Candidates agreed they must file a personal financial statement when they acknowledge receipt of an election information packet to the Mayor’s Office.
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At-large Position 3 candidate and former Astros executive Twila Carter said she did not submit a personal financial statement and that the language on the city website was unclear as to whether candidates were expected to file disclosures.
“In answer to your question, no, there is confusion. So I don’t know if the majority of the candidates filed and I didn’t. And if so, we can certainly rectify that. But there is confusion on the the language, and I’m working with long-time consultants,” Carter said.
Carter and District E candidate Martina Lemond Dixon are the only two named in the story that I would say have a decent chance of getting elected. Most of the rest are in the no-name/fringe category, which makes their lack of filing unsurprising. As with the finance reports, this is a place where I would like to see the software be better utilized to assist the filers in fulfilling their responsibilities and avoiding often-made mistakes. Maybe there’s an AI/ChatGPT opportunity here, I don’t know. What I do know is that we shouldn’t have almost thirty percent of candidates screw this up, even accounting for the significant amount of unserious entrants. To the extent that confusion or forgetting about deadlines or just not understanding what needs to be done contributes to this, we have the capability to make it easier for candidates. We should aim to do that.