Last week, the Massachusetts Senate passed bipartisan legislation to require ballot campaigns to routinely report to the public who is funding their campaigns and how the money is being used.

The measure increases transparency in campaign finance, gives voters access to the information they need to make informed choices, and guards against a rise in special interests paying millions to put their own priorities on the ballot.

As Geoff Foster, Executive Director of Common Cause has said, “Massachusetts voters deserve to know, in real time, who is bankrolling their ballot questions.”

According to Common Cause, ballot question committees have spent an average of $57 million in each of the last six Massachusetts election cycles.

The transparency bill, S.2898, An Act improving campaign finance reporting by state ballot question committees brings accountability to ballot question campaigns and holds them to the same standard of disclosure already followed by candidates for office.

The legislation would remedy a current void of nearly a year leading up to an election during which the ballot question campaigns are not required to report any financial data in a timely manner.

This month marks the start of the current eight-month period when ballot question committees are not required to regularly disclose any financial updates. From now until September, voters will be hit with campaign ads and mail without knowing who is funding them. Senators have now voted to close that gap, requiring ballot campaigns to report at least monthly on their donors.

The legislation was advanced to the full Senate on January 8 by a 15-0 vote of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, after a previous draft was reviewed and advanced in November by the Joint Committee on Election Laws. All committee votes are publicly available on the Legislature’s website.

The Senate passed the bill on a bipartisan 38-0 roll call vote, sending it to the House for consideration.

Specifically, the legislation opens up ballot question funding to public scrutiny by requiring ballot question committees to disclose their financial information in reports at least once per month, fixing current gaps in transparency that can keep campaigns’ machinations secret for nearly a year. The reports, filed with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) and publicly posted online, show which individuals and entities are funding the campaign and how the money is being spent, along with larger “in-kind” contributions and any new liabilities. Currently, in an election year, ballot question committees are not required to file financial reports from January until September, an eight-month period when voters are left in the dark while they attempt to learn about the potential laws they will be asked to vote on. In the year prior to the election, campaigns currently only need to file an initial report and a year-end report.

The new timeline calls for reports every month until September of the election year, when a biweekly deadline kicks in until Election Day.

Additionally, the legislation ensures trustworthy data by requiring data on donations and expenditures to come directly from the financial institution where the ballot question committee deposits its funds. The campaign committee is required to authorize their bank or other financial institution to send monthly financial reports directly to OCPF, the same system used by candidates for office.

State Senator Will Brownsberger represents the Fenway.