It is only by luck that the information on the money behind our candidates is available to you. It is public record; and it should be easily and readily available to every voter prior to election day. But it isn't. Florida state regulations all but insure that candidates do not have to fully reveal their money prior to election day.

I urge all Alachua County voters who value the information in this Buyers Guide to vote YES on Tuesday for the charter amendment giving local home rule to regulate campaign finance for our local county charter officers.

No one should have to go through what I do in order to see this money. With local campaign finance regulation, the Alachua County voters can plug the loopholes that allow this money to be undisclosed.

To make this money publically known, I had to repeatedly ask each of our local candidates to voluntarily turn their financial reports in earlier than required. Experience has shown that my request would often be ignored were it not for having the influence of our local newspaper behind me.

Only because the candidates in this election voluntarily agreed to turn their reports in before 5pm Friday are you able to see this money appearing on this website and our local newspaper will be able to print the candidates' contributions on Sunday. They didn't have to. For example, a candidate in a recent Micanopy town election successfully withheld disclosure of his contributions until after the election by use of these loopholes despite my request.

To generate this information, I began working at noon on Friday as the first candidate reports were turned in. I was not able to finish processing the last candidate reports until 2:30am this morning.

We can do far better than this in Alachua County with the ability to set regulation of our local campaign finances. It is the first crucial step toward local campaign finance reform. Please consider voting YES for the charter amendment. More information about this amendment and the need for local campaign reform can be found at www.AlachuaCampaignReform.org .

With local regulation, we can require the candidate financial reports to be turned in earlier and insure that public disclosure and newspaper coverage of the finances occur prior to the election.

Thank you for your consideration,

Susan Wright
Saturday, Nov 2, 2002