The ethics commission must maintain an electronic reporting system for campaign finance and financial interest disclosure reports, and certain reports must be made publicly accessible.
*130.057. Campaign finance electronic reporting system, establishment, use of — certain candidates and committees to file in electronic format, when, fees to convert paper copy — purchase of electronic system, requirements — public access. — 1. In order for candidates for election and public officials to more easily file reports required by law and to access information contained in such reports, and for the Missouri ethics commission to receive and store reports in an efficient and economical method, and for the general public and news media to access information contained in such reports, the commission shall establish and maintain an electronic reporting system pursuant to this section. 2. The ethics commission shall establish and maintain a state campaign finance and financial interest disclosure electronic reporting system pursuant to this section for all candidates and committees required to file under this chapter. The system may be used for the collection, filing and dissemination of all reports, including monthly lobbying reports filed by law, and all reports filed with the commission pursuant to this chapter and chapter 105. The reports shall be maintained and secured in the electronic format by the commission. 3. A copy of all reports filed in the state campaign finance electronic reporting system shall be placed on a public electronic access system so that the general public may have open access to the reports filed pursuant to this section. The access system shall be organized and maintained in such a manner to allow an individual to obtain information concerning all contributions made to or on behalf of, and all expenditures made on behalf of, any candidate or public official described in subsection 2 of this section in formats that will include both written and electronically readable formats. 4. All records that are in electronic format, not otherwise closed by law, shall be available in electronic format to the public. The commission shall maintain and provide for public inspection, a listing of all reports with a complete description for each field contained on the report, that has been used to extract information from their database files. The commission shall develop a report or reports which contain every field in each database. 5. Annually, the commission shall provide, without cost, a system-wide dump of information contained in the commission's electronic database files to the general assembly. The information is to be copied onto a medium specified by the general assembly. Such information shall not contain records otherwise closed by law. It is the intent of the general assembly to provide open access to the commission's records. The commission shall make every reasonable effort to comply with requests for information and shall take a liberal interpretation when considering such requests. (L. 1994 S.B. 650, A.L. 1996 H.B. 1557 & 1489, A.L. 1997 S.B. 16, A.L. 1999 H.B. 676 merged with S.B. 31 & 285, A.L. 2010 S.B. 844, A.L. 2016 S.B. 786, A.L. 2018 S.B. 975 & 1024 Revision) *Revisor's Note: S.B. 844 in 2010 amended this section. S.B. 844 was declared unconstitutional (see Legends Bank v. State, 361 S.W.3d 383 (Mo. banc)). The S.B. 844 version of this section was repealed by S.B. 975 & 1024 Revision, 2018. This version of this section (the 2016 language from S.B. 786, effective 1/1/2017) is the current version.