Ogden voters have some big decisions to make in the current election.

But it’s confusing, with seven candidates for mayor and nine for contested city council seats. I applaud the Standard-Examiner for printing plenty of quotes from all the candidates–but objective information about them can be harder to find.

One valuable source of information can be the candidates’ financial disclosure statements, showing their itemized campaign contributions and expenditures. Voters deserve to know how much money candidates are raising and whether it has come from many small donors or a few deep-pocketed special interests.

Sometimes disclosure statements can raise serious red flags. In past years some Ogden candidates have received large contributions from mysterious unregistered organizations, or from city contractors engaging in what appear to be pay-to-play transactions.

Unfortunately, this year’s candidates are not required to submit their first disclosure statements until August 29–two weeks after ballots were mailed and just one week before the voting deadline. I’m disappointed that the city council has not taken the initiative to add an earlier disclosure deadline, to inform voters in a timely manner.

But I’m pleased to report that two candidates have recognized this problem and proactively posted preliminary disclosure statements on their campaign web sites. Those two are mayoral candidate Taylor Knuth and Council District 4 candidate Dave Graf.

I encourage all voters to download these statements and see who is supporting these candidates. One thing you’ll see is that each of them has remarkably broad support in our community.

If you are inclined to vote for a different candidate, I encourage you to wait until after you’ve seen that candidate’s disclosure statement, which should be posted on the city’s elections page soon after August 29.

Dan Schroeder

Ogden

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