WASHINGTON – I reported last week that four of the five Republican Senate contenders and two northeast Indiana congressional candidates – one Democrat, one Republican – didn’t file the mandatory reports that lay out their personal assets.

The reports were due April 4, a month before the May 4 primary. But 10 days later, only Senate candidate Marlin Stutzman and House candidate Phil Troyer had met the requirement. (Incumbent Rep. Mark Souder doesn’t have to file until May 15 because he’s a sitting lawmaker.)

Dan Coats’ explanation: Bad advice from my attorney.

John Hostettler: They didn’t send me any forms as they used to when I was in the House.

Richard Behney: Hmm, didn’t know I had to do that.

Don Bates: Forgot to mail it.

Tom Hayhurst: Aides thought it was due May 15.

Bob Thomas: I got an extension.

Does it matter? Is being 10 days or even two weeks overdue really that big a deal?

Yes, indeedy, it is.

The reasons fall into two categories.

The first is that if you are going to run for Congress, you really ought to read the rules and follow them. Not knowing is not good enough.

The second is that blowing off the rules suggests contempt for even a minimum level of transparency.

It might not affect your vote to know that a candidate’s financial security is wrapped up in a particular industry sector – or that he or she has a massive debt (aside from a mortgage). But knowing those connections might alert you to when a candidate takes a position that tends to favor his or her financial self-interest. That is very much your business.

Coats’ and Thomas’ explanations are particularly disturbing.

Coats is well aware that his background as a Washington lobbyist is fodder for his primary opponents, not to mention the Democrats. By muffing the financial disclosure requirement, he made an error that was probably inadvertent but could be interpreted as deliberate.

Stutzman didn’t hold back. He said Coats “refuses to come clean to the people of Indiana. Dan Coats appears to be totally owned by the Washington establishment and special interests.”

Stutzman is wrong on one point: Lobbyists are paid by their firms, so when Coats gets around to filing his disclosure report, we probably won’t see a list of how much money he received from specific clients. In fact, the firms’ clients that Coats worked for are already public record.

But Coats left himself open to that kind of allegation when he relied on the advice of attorneys who can’t decipher a simple requirement of when a report is due.

Was Coats inept, either personally or by choosing C-minus advisers? Or is he dragging his feet on the disclosure form to hide something? We don’t know, but it is not comforting to consider either as a quality for a Senate candidate.

Thomas’ explanation is equally unsettling. He said he got a verbal OK to turn in his form late. There is no way to verify that because the House ethics committee won’t disclose its dealings with filers, and there is no written permission letter that Thomas can produce.

However, if the ethics committee granted Thomas a waiver on the deadline, it broke its very clearly stated rules: No exemptions that would cut into the 30-days-before-a-primary rule.

As with Coats, Thomas’ disregard for the filing deadline raises the legitimate question of whether he has something to hide.

Souder suggests there’s some deliberate obfuscation afoot, and that rather than detail his wealth and assets, Thomas is willing to risk being fined by the ethics committee.

Maybe, maybe not. Souder certainly has a vested interest in pushing the unflattering interpretation. But by disregarding the rules, Thomas opens the door to that view. It’s the kind of bad-press distraction avoided by savvy politicians and people committed to government transparency.

(And before anyone says it’s not a good thing to be a savvy politician, let me ask this: Why would we want someone to make decisions on our behalf who has no skills for a major part of the job? Do you want a dentist who skipped all the classes on filling cavities?)

I give Hayhurst a minuscule break here. His advisers thought the deadline was May 15 because they didn’t read the rest of the sentence: except all forms must be filed at least 30 days before the primary. Hayhurst gets bad marks for surrounding himself with people who gloss over important things. But Hayhurst’s primary opponent is a political non-entity, so it is less crucial for people to have a sense of Hayhurst’s financial status before the primary.

Nonetheless, it is bad form for Hayhurst, who has been through this process before and should know better, to shirk this responsibility that all candidates have.