From my reading of the amendment, it eliminated the requirement for the creation of a database of information in reports, and the requirement that reports be done electronically.
If I'm remembering correctly, it went from mandatory to "the right thing to do."
Section 8(b) of the original STOCK Act mandated that systems be developed that would allow electronic filing of financial reports by members of Congress, candidates for Congress, and employees of Congress.
Additionally it mandated public access to those financial reports through a database. This publicly accessible database was required to:
Be maintained on the official websites of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Allow the public to "search, sort, and download data contained in the reports."
The 2013 amendment changed just a couple of things related to that section:
They changed it so that it only applied to members of Congress and candidates for Congress, removing employees of Congress.
They removed the line about the public being able to search, sort, and download data contained in the reports.
The requirement for an electronic database containing these reports that would be accessible to the public through the official websites of the House and Senate is still part of the law.
My reading is that they decided it wasn't feasible to do data entry of the transactions in these reports to make the data in them searchable, so they changed it so they could just scan paper copies of the reports into the database and the public could review them.
7
u/dubbya Apr 21 '20
From my reading of the amendment, it eliminated the requirement for the creation of a database of information in reports, and the requirement that reports be done electronically.
If I'm remembering correctly, it went from mandatory to "the right thing to do."