Finance
Editorial: A complete betrayal on campaign finance
The League of Women Voters of Oregon isn’t known for foot-stomping tantrums or fanatical rhetoric. So, when a representative for the voter education group sits before legislators and denounces a bill as a “complete betrayal,” it’s worth listening up.
The betrayal in this case is House Bill 4018. The legislation seeks to delay and change portions of a 2024 campaign finance bill that had been negotiated by a coalition of good government groups, including the League, with House Speaker Julie Fahey, labor union representatives and business lobbyists. In exchange for passage of the contribution caps and disclosure requirements in that 2024 legislation, the coalition agreed to pull a developing ballot initiative that would have asked voters to impose limits. Most of the bill’s provisions were to go in effect in 2027 — presumably giving plenty of time to work out legislative or implementation issues.
Only now, legislators, lobbyists and the Oregon secretary of state are collectively saying, “Whoa.” HB 4018 — this time negotiated by Fahey behind closed doors without any good government representatives — would allow the contribution limits to take effect in January 2027 as originally planned. But it also seeks to delay donor disclosure requirements until 2031, doubles the donation limits in some cases and undoes protections that were central to the original legislation.
Among the worst changes: the bill would weaken the 2024 legislation’s “anti-proliferation” provision, which prevents donors from skirting limits by funneling additional contributions to candidates through political action committees, corporations or other entities that they control or create. The new bill would add language that would allow contributions from all those entities provided that they were not created for the “sole purpose” of evading the limits.
That flimsy standard would allow the same powerbrokers who have dominated Oregon politics to continue to do so with ease, said attorney Dan Meek, the longtime campaign finance expert with the Honest Elections Oregon coalition who led the good government groups’ negotiations in 2024.
“Complete betrayal” is exactly right. It’s a betrayal not only of the coalition that forced legislators to finally take action in 2024, but of Oregonians who have been clamoring for meaningful contribution limits for decades. Instead, Oregon remains one of only five states in the country that allows unlimited direct contributions to candidates. HB 4018, passed by the House Rules Committee last week with only Republican Alek Skarlatos voting “no,” is now in the Joint Committee for Ways and Means.
Proponents are casting HB 4018 as a way to ensure that campaign finance reforms are done right, with “needed policy clarifications to ensure the program can actually work for everyone” and by giving the secretary of state’s office time to build and implement a software program to handle the data and disclosure, Fahey’s office said. Neither argument, however, holds up.
Start with the supposed “fixes.” There’s the kneecapping of the anti-proliferation provision mentioned above, but critics have pointed out several more.
The 2024 bill laid out limits for contributions based on the type of donor and the office that a candidate is seeking — for instance a $5,000 donation from an individual to a multicandidate political action committee over a two-year election cycle. But for some of those categories, the new bill shortens the time period from a two-year cycle to one year, while keeping the same dollar amount. If the desire was to establish an annual limit, legislators should have similarly halved the donation total, Meek said.
Additionally, HB 4018 seeks to remove language that expressly defines expenditures by a person or political action committee “with the cooperation” of a candidate as a “contribution.” While proponents contend that’s redundant, because such spending should already be considered a contribution, the intentional legislative act of deleting that language may lead a court to rule otherwise, said David Kolker, senior counsel at the Washington, D.C. -based Campaign Legal Center.
If a court determines such expenditures should not be considered contributions subject to the limits, that could open the door for PACs to coordinate with candidates — or even take over their campaign — and run ads without restriction or disclosure requirements, critics said. It’s like Citizens United, except PACs wouldn’t have to strategize independently of the candidate.
HB 4018 proponents are also arguing that the secretary of state’s office needs more time to build and implement the software for the law’s disclosure and campaign finance website requirements. In fact, Secretary of State Tobias Read said his office could need around $25 million to build and implement the software on the existing timeline. Even with that, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board, he worries about getting the technology right and avoiding adding to Oregon’s collection of all-time technology debacles, from the $300 million Cover Oregon failure to the Employment Department’s decade-plus software-replacement delay.
Keeping the campaign limit deadlines in place while pushing off the software-dependent disclosure requirements will give the office the chance to deliver on what was promised, he said.
But that’s why the testimony last week from Catherine Nikolovski, executive director of Civics Software Foundation, was so compelling. Her nonprofit built the software that runs Portland’s Small Donor Elections campaign finance system — an example of an ambitious Oregon technology project that launched successfully and has capably handled the growth and changes over the past six years.
She noted her group’s deep familiarity with the state’s existing campaign finance software and that the Portland program was designed with the ability to expand for statewide use in mind. Importantly, the Portland program can address most of the elements sought in the state’s request for proposals, significantly cutting down on the time and cost needed to tailor it for the state, she said. At the very least, there should be a willingness to explore this alternative rather than let the state blow past its deadlines and take another three to four years to deliver.
There are so many reasons to reject HB 4018 outright — the secret negotiations that excluded campaign finance reformers, the rushed nature of the bill, the changed limits, the weakening of protections and the impact on public trust. And there’s only one reason to push the bill through — to retain the same entrenched system of big money politics that Oregonians have sought to defeat in ballot measure after ballot measure after ballot measure. Is it any surprise that legislators of both parties, labor union representatives and big businesses have all expressed their strong support of HB 4018?
Legislators should turn back these changes and work with good-government groups to set this program up for success in 2027. The message from voters has never wavered. Lawmakers shouldn’t either.
-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a landmark review on Monday that proposes recommendations to regulate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the financial decisions made by consumers.
The review, titled the Mills Review, anticipates that both consumers and firms will start delegating “more financial decision-making to AI systems,” including for agreements, initiating transactions, and executing decisions “within agreed parameters.” One of the key findings of the review outlined that while AI can help bridge advice gaps and “support growth,” there remain risks “associated with fraud, cyber security, and consumer harm.” Conducting the review, Sheldon Mills highlighted that “AI can also amplify risks: bias, discrimination, exclusion, opaque decision-making (particularly when multiple AI models interact), misleading or hallucinatory advice and erosion of consumer trust.”
The review stated that presently, one in five adults in the UK are “already open to AI making decisions for them,” particularly when decisions feel “complex or high stakes.” It found that roughly 26 percent of the population “trust general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for financial advice” with little awareness that such platforms provide no “formal routes to recourse” or protections.
Overall, the Mills Review identified four areas that it anticipates will be impacted by AI in the financial sector: “the transformation of firms,” “new consumer journeys,” “a reshaped competition landscape,” and “amplified financial crime and cyber risk.” The FCA projected the shift in how consumers and firms consult AI to take place by 2030.
The Mills Review put forth seven “priority” recommendations to be considered by the FCA Board. It recommended that any transitions to autonomous AI models be monitored and that regulatory frameworks and perimeters be adapted and secured. The review called for the strengthening of “system-wide coordination and oversight,” the scaling up of the FCA’s AI Lab to enable it to support AI models and innovation for agentic finance, and an “AI-enabled agentic supervisory model” to be built and adopted. Finally, it recommended that a trusted “public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service” be developed.
The FCA announced, in the press release, that it will launch an AI “good and poor practice publication” in late 2026.
Finance
Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approves audit contract, new finance director position
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – The Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approved a one-year audit contract capped at $131,750 plus $225 per hour during a virtual meeting Monday, along with a new finance director job description.
The contract is with Mauldin & Jenkins Certified Public Accountants, an Atlanta-based firm, and covers the 2025-26 fiscal year and the restatement of the 2024-25 fiscal year and ancillary services through FY 2029-2030. The work is set to be completed by Nov. 15.
The board approved the contract in a 5-0 vote.
Audit contract details
Interim Chief Financial Officer Kyna Koch said the cost is already accounted for in the district’s budget.
“And is actually less than we expected given our current situation — we were thrilled with the bid,” Koch said.
Koch said she believes this is Mauldin & Jenkins’ first school district audit in Kentucky, but that the firm works with school districts of more than 100,000 students throughout the Southeast.
“Quite frankly when I spoke to the folks at KDE they were thrilled because we’re running kind of short of auditors who want to do school district audits — so all around I think this was a win-win for everyone,” Koch said.
New finance director position
The board also approved a new job description for the position of Director of Finance. Acting Superintendent Dr. Bill Bradford said the title will replace two associate director positions.
“Which will not only save the school district money but it’s also going to streamline our work and align internal controls to make room for a more efficient unit,” Bradford said.
Koch said the position will be posted as soon as possible following the board’s approval.
Closed session
The board went into closed session for more than an hour to discuss pending investigations that could lead to employee discipline. When the board returned, it took no action and adjourned the meeting.
Copyright 2026 WKYT. All rights reserved.
The UK’s financial regulator should consider expanding its oversight to cover advanced artificial intelligence models used in financial services, according to a review commissioned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), as policymakers assess whether existing rules can keep pace with rapidly evolving AI technology.
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