On a more personal note, thanks so much to everyone who sent words of encouragement about Lucas the black lab. Fortunately for him (although not so for me), the young pup was adopted early Monday morning before I had the chance to go back for him. Someone else apparently loved him as much as I did. But Jen and I went dog searching again over the weekend. We haven't yet found the right pup, but I'm sure we will before long.

Have a great week, and thanks for reading!

-Gabe

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After all these years, the dreams of journalists and good-government groups are finally going to become a reality: It will be possible to read and download the spending reports of our elected officials. To those who have better things to do than follow politics, this may not sound like a big deal. But it is a very big deal, indeed.

Here's why.

A state candidate's spending and contribution reports, with a scant few exceptions, currently are filed with the Secretary of State's office in paper form. These documents, some of them hundreds of pages long, are maintained at the office headquarters in Sacramento and at a handful of offices around the state. If you want to see what a candidate received and how the money was spent, you have to travel to one of those offices and paw through the reports. If you can afford it, you can make copies of the reports, take the wad of paperwork home or to your office, and examine them at your leisure. As anyone who has done this can attest, this is tedious, cumbersome and awkward, and it can take days to examine a single major report, such as the filing for a gubernatorial candidate.

But beginning in January, anyone with a reasonably modern personal computer and a modem can view these reports as soon as they are filed. The documents will be provided in two forms -- one, called a PDF file that will offer a visual representation of the report, and another, called a database file, that will provide the numbers in a format compatible with a spreadsheet or relational database program, such as Excel, FoxPro or Access.

That means a viewer can arrange the data instantly into a multitude of formats, such as contributions to candidate over $10,000, or contributions arranged according to source, or contributions defined chronologically, and more.

The new site will have a search engine to simplify inquiries. There also will be a complete list of major donors who, by legal definition, are those who contribute more than $10,000 in any given election cycle.

Lobbyists will be included, not only how much they gave but also the bills and individuals they were targeting. That means it will be possible to quickly identify the big-money bills, the clients of the lobbyists who bankrolled the contributions, and the recipients of their largesse -- something that can be done now, but only with a great deal of difficulty.

The filing of spending and contribution reports has been required by law since the mid-1970s. But the disclosure process has been so unwieldy that few members of the public have been able to take advantage. What many people know of the money behind their elected officials has often come from reporters who have examined the reports and wrote stories about them. But soon, the information will be available to everybody quickly, and people will be able to obtain a picture of political spending unfiltered by journalists. This, if nothing else, is an enormous benefit to the public that has long been unattainable.

It's difficult to overstate the significance of this. Truly, a new day is dawning.

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You asked for it, you got it! The current listings for both Assembly and Senate committees are now available through our Web site. Point your browser to http://www.capenq.com/gov/info.html for links to the rosters.

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Looking for the current roster of the Assembly or Senate? Head on over to http://www.capenq.com/gov/info.html for links to the current lists -- complete with district, member name, party, room and phone number.