As part of an agreement with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, the Montana Association of REALTORS will be hosting a series of campaign finance and reporting workshops for candidates and committees.

Commissioner Jeff Mangan explained why the workshops are important for candidates and committees.

“One of my goals as Commissioner is to do a lot more education and have training available for all the candidates,” Mangan said. “The idea is to reduce or eliminate the most common reporting errors and make sure that treasurers and candidates understand exactly what they have to report, ands obviously have the ability to ask questions and understand what the law and the rules are.”

Mangan outlined the most common errors that candidates and those promoting issues make in reporting to the Political Practices Commission.

“Just forgetting to report all their expenditures, such as not reporting enough detail on expenditures, forgetting quantity, date ranges and things like that.”

KGVO reported during the most recent mayoral election, one individual ran afoul of the political practices office for boosting a Facebook post. Mangan said there will be information at the workshops about using social media in campaigns.

“As a matter of fact, if we can get it to work, we even plan to livestream one of the workshops on Facebook,” he said. “Certainly, social media is going to be a focus in these trainings, both in attribution as well as reporting and when people pay to boost a post on Facebook what requirements are for the candidates.”

Mangan said the training will be open to both candidates, campaign committees and the public.

The training in Missoula will be on March 28 at the Missoula Organization of Realtors office at 724 Burlington Avenue.

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