The Missouri Ethics Commission is making it about as easy as possible for candidates and the groups that try to get them elected to learn about campaign finance law. Executive Director Julie Allen says the Commission will start offering its webinars in the evenings, to allow candidates and their treasurers who have regular day jobs to still take part in the classes.
“I believe, and I think the commission believes, that most of us want to follow the law and we take every opportunity usually to learn and understand about a law that we’re responsible for. So this gives them that opportunity to have an avenue and have just one more tool to understand the campaign finance laws,” Allen said.
The webinar for candidates already existed before this year, and is being offered in the evening now as well. The Ethics Commission is also launching a new webinar for the treasurers of political action committees, after Allen says they got a lot of feedback asking for that type of course.
Allen says the one-hour webinars obviously can’t cover the breadth of campaign finance law, but they aim to hit a lot of the major points at once.
“A committee or candidate or treasurer are ultimately responsible for making sure they comply with the law. But this gives them a good basis to understand the law and also gives them a good resource to come back to,” Allen said.
She says a lot of the information from the webinars is also available to candidates and committees at any time on the Commission’s website.
