The hardest question I hear as a longtime activist working in Sacramento to elevate the power of average voters over wealthy special interests isn’t the question you might expect.

The question that’s hardest to answer isn’t how to find out who funds campaigns in California. It isn’t about whether the system can be improved.

No, the hardest question is: “Where is the website that tells me who all my elected officials are and how to contact them?”

And the surprising answer I find myself giving over and over is: There isn’t one. There’s no website where you can enter your address and see all your elected officials, soup to nuts, from president to Assembly member to water or school board member.

It’s hard to believe that such a website doesn’t exist in 2018. But, in the state that birthed personal computing, the internet and genetic engineering, and is home to companies creating everything from artificial intelligence to spacecraft, our state government has not taken this simple step to better equip its own citizens to participate in self-governing.

As a computer scientist, I promise you: This is easy. In fact, six California counties already have such websites and they are among the most popular websites in those counties. The counties pay a vendor who used college students to create the site from publicly available data. Counties pay less than $1,000 annually. The site works on laptops. It works on phones. It works in English and in Spanish.

In the state that is the world headquarters for high technology, there is simply no excuse for not doing on a state level what Inyo County does on a local level.

Thankfully, there’s a bipartisan bill in California, AB2707, that would fix this embarrassing state government omission. Because the secretary of state, based on simply incorrect assumptions, forecast the website would cost a whopping $2.5 million to establish, the bill’s author, Assembly Speaker pro tem Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, did something novel. He included a cap on the cost of establishing the website in his legislation. If no qualified bidder comes in under the cost cap, the secretary isn’t required to establish the site.

What’s the cost cap in the bill? $2.5 million? Nope. $1.5 million? Sorry; lower. $1 million? Not even close.

The Assembly member capped the cost of establishing the site at a mere $250,000, an amount so small that it is barely visible in a state budget topping $100 billion.

Yet, the secretary of state has yet to publicly endorse the bill. Respectfully, he should.

And, Gov. Jerry Brown should sign when it arrives at his desk.

Knowing who your elected officials are is a key part of governing at the local level, one of the governor’s basic philosophies. Plus, every time a voter used the site they would be reminded that their secretary of state can deliver basic information to them efficiently and competently.

Of course, it is understandable that the governor and the secretary spend vast sums on their own priorities. We elected them to do just that. But, our foundational priority must be the health of our democracy. Given the billions of dollars we spend on other programs, and given that Silicon Valley is here in California, the governor and the secretary should support paying this absurdly small price for making it easier for Californians to find out who governs them.

Trent Lange is the president and executive director of the California Clean Money Campaign. http://www.YesFairElections.org Email: TLange@CAclean.org