Two Securities and Exchange Commission officials indicated last week that they considering a petition requesting that the agency require public companies to disclose their political spending, according to an article in the New York Times by Lucian Bebchuck, a professor at Harvard Law School.

The SEC has received 30,000 comment letters on the petition requesting political spending disclosures, the "vast majority" of which were in favor of such disclosures. The interest in this topic is also reflected in shareholder proposals about political spending disclosure, which according to the article has been the most frequent topic of such proposals in recent years.

The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United loosened restrictions on such spending. The story notes that in that decision, the court suggested investors could check that their companies' political activities was consistent with their interests via "the procedures of corporate democracy