California's campaign finance and lobbying disclosure database got back up and running in time for the New Year.
Cal-Access went back online at 5:45 p.m. on Friday, according to a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Debra Bowen, ending a month of technical troubles that had blocked online filings and public access to the reporting database for all but 30 hours since November 30.
"Thank you for your patience during the outage," Nicole Winger wrote in an email. "Although Secretary of State staff were able to serve reporters, filers and researchers in many ways while CAL-ACCESS was offline, we understand Internet availability of this system is extremely important and the inconvenience was frustrating. "
Staff at the secretary of state's office had been working since mid-December on three separate routes for restoring access to 12-year-old system. Winger was not immediately available for comment on which approach brought the site back online.
The secretary of state's office has cautioned that a permanent fix would require more funding to build a replacement from scratch. Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said last month that he will introduce legislation this year to increase filing fees for lobbyists to raise money for the electronic filing system.
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