Candidates running in a Park City, Summit County or school board election will now need to disclose their campaign’s financial information earlier than in past years.
County Clerk Eve Furse brought a proposed ordinance to the Summit County Council’s last meeting of 2025, requesting a change in how financial disclosures are handled at the local level. She said state law allows county governments to impose their own regulations on financial disclosure requirements, but Summit County never adopted a local ordinance. That means the county has been using the barebones standards set by the state for all elections thus far.
Furse said the ordinance pushes the publication date for financial information forward by four days. Instead of voters having only ten days to review a candidate’s filings, there will now be 14 days to digest the financial status of an individual’s campaign.
“I would have ideally preferred to have moved it to the three-week mark so that it would have coincided with ballots being available and voters could have financial information about candidates at the same time they started voting,” Furse said. “But we’re not permitted to do that by state law, so we moved it to the earliest we could, which is 14 days prior.”
The local ordinance additionally implements a requirement to submit financial disclosures before primary elections, too. Furse said it was a decision her office made because races can often be decided during the primary season if a candidate is running unopposed. Previously, financial disclosures were only required before Election Day in November.
Furse also addressed concerns regarding political consultants, saying she’d heard rumblings that people were under the impression that they didn’t need to include a contract with a consultant in their financial disclosures, depending on the language of the document.
Specifically, she said contracts can include a stipulation that a candidate doesn’t need to pay the consulting fee unless the individual wins the race. However, Furse clarified that those contracts need to be included, no matter the state of the election or whether a candidate wins, because those contracts indicate a financial commitment related to their campaign.
“We think (the ordinance) will be beneficial, both to candidates, voters and our office, because that gives the most time prior to the election to get that information together and make it available to the public before things really get into the fray at the end of the election,” Furse said.
The County Council unanimously voted in favor of the ordinance, which will be in effect for the 2026 election cycle.