With just six months until the June primary election, campaign cash is starting to flow to candidate and ballot measure committees.

But for much of the past two weeks, technological difficulties have blocked the public's ability to track the transactions online.

Cal-Access, the 12-year-old portal for filing campaign finance and lobbying reports, has been down for all but 30 hours since Nov. 30.

Although staff at the secretary of state's office have been working since Monday on three separate approaches to try to restore access, Secretary of State Debra Bowen said Wednesday it's unclear when the site will be back up and running.

"We want to get it up as soon as possible, but we also want to complete the fix that will be the most stable over time," Bowen said.

In the meantime, lobbyists and political committees are reverting to the paper filing system they used for years before the 1999 creation of Cal-Access, submitting reports via mail, by fax or in person. Members of the public can call, email or visit the secretary of state's office to access the information.

But with fundraising for 2012 ballot measures and candidate campaigns ramping up, the repeated failures of the state's only online disclosure database for campaign and lobbying reports is troubling for advocates.

"The public needs access to this data sooner rather than later," said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation. "We're heading into another legislative session, (and) there's going to be a lot of contested legislative and congressional races."

Bowen said that while she hopes her staff's efforts will keep the online database in place through the election, a permanent fix will require a complete overhaul.

"When this was built, I think we were probably on Windows 95," said Bowen, who has long advocated for use of technology in politics. "That won't run most of the software that's made today. It just won't run."

Bowen's office estimates that building a new system would cost millions of dollars – money that's hard to come by in a cash-strapped state.

But critics say funding constraints are no excuse when it comes to complying with state laws mandating electronic campaign finance filings.

"Quite frankly, it seems like an accident waiting to happen," said Derek Cressman of Common Cause. "It's woefully outdated."

One solution, Cressman says, is to increase the registration fees paid by lobbyists who file using the system to raise money to cover an upgrade.

That proposal has gained at least one supporter in the state Legislature.

Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, plans to introduce legislation to double the yearly registration fees to $100, a move his office estimates would generate $50,000 annually.

Yee's chief of staff, Adam Keigwin, said the senator hopes the added revenue would encourage officials to think "outside the box" to craft a lower-cost solution.

"We have Facebook and Twitter and all these social networking apps and databases that have been started with almost no capital at all," Keigwin said. "There's no reason that state government can't use that same ingenuity to come up with a system where the public can manage, and see and access, campaign and lobbyist information."

Sacramento-based lobbyist Jim Cassie said while maintaining public access is important, requiring lobbyists to foot the bill is "off base."

"I just think that the website is valuable to much more than just to the lobbying corps," said Cassie, who serves as vice president of the industry's Institute of Governmental Advocates. "There's other people who use it besides us."

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Call Torey Van Oot, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5544.

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