The money that pours into our political process has always been slippery stuff, consequential because of the government influence it can buy but increasingly difficult to track. The current murky flap over the Ben Cayetano campaign reveals little of the full truth.

The Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 turned the funding stream into a flood. But setting that aside, Hawaii’s government has attempted to oversee at least the cash that comes directly to the candidate committee, limiting the amounts any one donor can give. The most indulgent assessment is that the state has allotted too few resources to its regulatory duty; the most cynical one is that those in control of government have no interest in doing so.

Still, justifiable public unease remains about the potential for influence peddling, and that’s evidently what a political action committee is trying to tap in its advertising blitz against former Gov. Cayetano in his current bid to be Honolulu’s next mayor.

The PAC, ReadBensRecord.com, was launched this week by Pacific Resource Partnership, a group that advocates for the construction industry and is a vigorous supporter of the proposed elevated rail system, a $5.27 billion project Cayetano has vowed to defeat.

Its site makes the charge that Cayetano’s gubernatorial re-election campaign in 1998 benefited from more than a half-million dollars in campaign donations that were in excess of legal limits, were given by donors under a false name, or both.

That much is factual, but a clear understanding of the situation requires context that is hard if not impossible to find in the PAC presentation.

The bottom line is that Cayetano broke no campaign spending law, was only one of several candidates whose campaign warchests received donations eventually found to be illicit by the Campaign Spending Commission, and owes no debt for the money spent as part of his last campaign.

The agency is now equipped with better electronic means of checking records but still only five staffers, who researched the history of the case and offered a brief timeline:

» In September 2002, four years after the campaign, the commission wrote to the Friends of Ben Cayetano, his gubernatorial campaign committee, and told them $65,575 needed to be repaid. The next month, the campaign paid what remained in its account: $8.555.68.

» The campaign — and over the coming months, those of several other candidates — had zeroed out its account. When the commission made findings on additional illegal donations over the course of three more years, it was uncertain whether the campaign committees were liable for those charges.

» The answer came from Mark Bennett, then attorney general, in a letter sent April 3, 2006. The sum of the message: "No further debt would be owed to the Campaign Spending Commission if the candidate’s committee did not have enough money to turn over."

» The commission then wrote to the campaign committees. On April 6, the agency told the Friends it could submit the required form to terminate the committee, and it did so.

On one of the PAC’s other allegations, it’s undeniable that major donors to campaigns can be linked to government contracts, something that happens across all levels of government. But drawing the lines of accountability back to the candidate takes more rigorous effort than what’s provided at ReadBensRecord.com.

A big-stakes campaign like this one, not surprisingly, draws down the big guns. What’s unfortunate is that the voter has so little ammunition — either through the adequate staffing of the commission or the time to inspect the allegations being made — to fight back.