A funny thing happened after I posted a list on Friday of the top recipients of labor union campaign contributions during the first seven months of the year (“Top labor picks this campaign season“).

Soon afterwards, I saw that Civil Beat had also taken a closer look at labor union contributions (“Labor Unions Spend Heavily Trying To Sway Hawaii Elections“).

Two takes on the same issue, from a slightly different perspective, but one thing was quickly clear to me, and it wasn’t good. Civil Beat’s numbers and my numbers didn’t agree.

The difference was in the total amounts spent by the different unions. The figures that I had calculated were much lower.

The first thing I did was to recheck my figures. I had downloaded the Campaign Spending Commission data, but had then filtered and sorted the data in multiple ways in order to get a “feel” for what was going on. So I went through the process again, looking for possible errors. My numbers, it turned out, were consistent.

So I went back and reread the Civil Beat story carefully. Then I spotted the difference in our methods.

It was there at the beginning of the 4th paragraph: “Civil Beat looked at the state filings for more than 100 political action committees that have made contributions to candidates this year.”

I had worked from the other direction, looking at the campaign filings of the 200+ candidates that had filed reports with the Campaign Spending Commission up through July 24, 2020. Theoretically, there shouldn’t be much difference. Unions and political action committees report contributions they have made to candidates. And candidates report the same contributions as they are received from the unions and PACs.

In this situation, however, there were large differences depending on whether I looked at the union/PAC data or the candidates data.

For example, according to Civil Beat, the Hawaii Laborors’ PAC contributed $101,200 to candidates during the period January 1-July 24, 2020.

But candidates only reported receiving $62,000 in contributions from the union’s several related political committees. That means that 39 percent of the union’s contributions were not disclosed in the candidates reports.

So I took a closer look at the Laborers Union report. It turns out the union made most of their contributions (46 of 52) on July 15, 2020. Most candidates reported receiving the union contributions within a few days, well before the July 24 reporting deadline. But some candidates did not, and that perhaps is the explanation of what happened to the other 39%.

The state’s campaign spending law provides all campaign contributions and other campaign funds “shall be promptly deposited in a depository institution.”

Unfortunately, “promptly” is not defined, so its hard to tell whether some campaigns are just a bit tardy in getting their contributions into the bank.

My next exploration will try to test the theory that the difference in the two reporting systems is fully accounted for by the delay of some campaigns in recording and depositing these contributions. I should be able to do this by comparing the same reports from the last election, and including the campaigns’ reports from the subsequent reporting period so that late deposits would be included. Then if the figures all agree, we’ve got an explanation. If not, we’ve got a problem.

There’s one other issue worth noting. When looking at the disclosure reports filed by the Laborers, every one of the contributions is reported to be from the Hawaii Laborers Political Action Committee.

The same contributions as reported by the candidates’ campaign committees are variously described as being from the Laborers PAC, the Hawaii Laborers Union, the Hawaii LECET PAC Fund, or the Hawaii Laborers’ & Employers’ Coop & Educ Trust. So perhaps there needs to be some additional guidance to campaign treasurers regarding how to properly attribute such contributions when filing their reports with the Campaign Spending Commission.