An FPPC subcommittee will be presenting this report to the full FPPC at its next hearing. (I testified at one of the FPPC subcommittee’s hearings).
The report contains some important analysis and interesting observations. Given my own testimony and past views, I found the following of the most interest:
- Uncompensated bloggers should not be regulated at this time but considered to be engaged in activity falling under this exemption. If bloggers or others are communicating through electronic means and receiving compensation from campaigns and political committees, their activity will be revealed through expenditure reports filed by those entities. We acknowledge that witnesses testified that it is good practice for bloggers and others who are compensated by campaigns to reveal that information on their websites, and we applaud that practice. If in the future the right of Californians to full and truthful campaign disclosure is significantly compromised by undisclosed compensated bloggers, the Commission should revisit this decision and consider an appropriate regulatory or legislative response.