Press Release
April 23, 2010
CONTACT:
Jay Heck – 608/256-2686 WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE STILL NEEDS TO REFORM PHONY ISSUE ADS
The Wisconsin Legislature ended its 2009-2010 regular legislative session early this morning -- not with a bang, but with a whimper regarding campaign finance reform.
It failed to pass legislation to require the disclosure of the amount of money and the donors to outside special interest groups who run those nasty campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy which increasingly dominate our statewide and legislative elections in this state.
In January, the Wisconsin State Senate overwhelmingly passed
Senate Bill 43, bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation requiring disclosure of the donors and regulation of the money utilized by outside special interest groups and individuals that run widely-disseminated campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy during the period of 60 days or less prior to an election. The Assembly needed to modify the measure somewhat in the wake of the January 21st United States Supreme Court decision in :
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
But it never got done.
Even as late as this morning, after the State Senate adjourned for the session, the Assembly could have brought Senate Bill 43 to the floor and passed it (and those parts of the legislation rendered unconstitutional by the
Citizens United decision would have been excised from the law). But the leadership declined to do so. And so disclosure of phony issue ads didn't get considered or passed.
Governor Jim Doyle, who has been a consistent vocal supporter of requiring the disclosure of phony issue ads, should call the Legislature back into Special Session to finish the job and pass a modified version of Senate Bill 43. Senator Jon Erpenbach (D-Waunakee), a long-time leader on this matter, has draft legislation ready to be considered. It could be accomplished by both legislative chambers in less than an hour.
Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan (D-Janesville) and State Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (D-Schofield) also have it within their power to call the Legislature into Extraordinary Session to pass a modified version of Senate Bill 43.
Doyle, Sheridan and Decker need to show leadership on the issue of issue ads. Will any of them step up to do so?
__________________________________________
Jay Heck, Executive Director
Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
608/256-2686
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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
May 2, 2010
By Bill KrausA largely unnoticed and unremarked upon drift of power has been taking place within our democratic system for more than 30 years.
It is mostly a result of the unintended consequences of the Watergate reforms. These reforms were meant to punish the political parties for multiple abuses of the powers that had accrued to them over time.
The punishment exceeded the crime by largely destroying the parties’ longstanding ability to recruit and slate candidates and to fund and manage their campaigns.
The reform took away the parties' near monopoly on funding campaigns, and all the other roles that attended that one went away as well.
The money got loose.
This meant that the people and organizations who had been funding candidacies indirectly could now fund them directly.
An era of entrepreneurial candidacies began and was quickly squelched by the legislative leaders whose ability to control their caucuses was eroded by the candidates’ new freedoms.
The leaders set up legislative campaign committees and re-funneled the money flow so it got to the candidates through them because they controlled these organizations instead of getting to the candidates directly. They became what the parties had been before they went too far. They became the rainmakers.
This restored and enhanced their power. Once they got their hands on the money they took over the responsibility to recruit and slate, fund and manage from the displaced and weakened parties.
Like most people and organizations who are given too much power they overplayed their hands. Toll booths were set up. State employees’ jobs were expanded to include campaign work. And jail sentences followed. But, oddly enough, the power which had fallen into the laps of the legislative leaders pretty much stayed there. The parties did not resurrect. The crucial flow of the serious campaign money was not redirected away from the leadership offices.
So now we have a new set of legislative leaders who have pretty much the same power those they replaced had and misused.
Proof of malfeasance is not offered, but a weakened and understaffed print press corps has raised questions about why some legislation disappeared into wastebaskets in the leadership offices and other less or equally worthy proposals got what can only be described as favorable treatment in the chaotic last days of the legislative session.
These stories are a valuable reminder that the most desirable side effect of having a vigorous free press is that its practitioners provide the great public service of seeing that those with power are turning square corners.
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A Wisconsin Political Fix
not just another blog
April 26, 2010
By Bill KrausSenate Bill 43 died quietly last week. If an important newspaper ran a news story about its demise, it didn’t come to my attention.
The bill was known by those familiar with it as “the disclosure bill.” What it says in essence is that if you want to participate in political campaigns with advertisements for or against a candidate, you must tell everyone where you got the money to pay for these advertisements.
The state Senate passed it with a substantial bi-partisan majority. It didn’t survive a trip to the Assembly. It died in the Speaker’s office.
A lot of important political players showed up for the funeral. Some came to mourn the passing and others came to make sure it was really dead.
The mourners were:
1. The Supreme Court, which urged disclosure as the real and really constitutional reform when it issued the decision on the Citizens United case which allowed corporations and unions to do the kind of campaign advertising heretofore prohibited.
2. The GOP stalwarts who have always been leery of spending limits, public funding, and other regulatory palliatives and whose war cry was, is, and always will be Disclosure is the Answer. The death of disclosure means they lose the chance to prove their assertion that this is the ideal and only required campaign reform.
3. Candidates who come under attack from single-issue (usually) zealots with money who have become eminent to dominant participants in political campaigns recently.
4. The press, which supports political openness on its own behalf and, with the notable exception of many editorial-page editors, pretty much ignored this companion political openness effort which would have shown who the participants in campaigns really are.
5. Fairness advocates, who pointed out that candidates must reveal where they get the money they spend to promote their candidacies, but their non-candidate enemies and opponents are under no such obligation.
The “Were glad you’re dead crowd” included:
1. Free-market fanatics, including our current governor, who kind of like the high-spending, raucous, media-driven, corruption inducing system.
2. Free-speech protectors who consider anonymity a necessary part of that guarantee. They do not think free speech is really free unless it can be done without attribution, so it is free from backlash by those who are offended by it.
3. Organizations whose members’ commercial interests are protected from the consequences of their spending on their political interests.
4. Anyone who wants to put their money where their mouth isn’t. Strange bedfellows of all kinds. Right-To-Life organizations must have a lot of them judging from their vehemence about keeping the identity of their funders secret. Collateral partisan groups like Club for Growth and The Greater Wisconsin Committee also fall into this category.
5. Candidates who expect to be rewarded for letting the foregoing beneficiaries of non-disclosure maintain their anonymity in the expectation that those who they protect from this unwanted publicity will lavish praise and money on them.
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Press Release
April 22, 2010
CONTACT:
Jay Heck – 608/256-2686 WISCONSIN LEGISLATURE MUST PASS CAMPAIGN FINANCE DISCLOSURE REFORM
ON LAST DAY OF SESSION - TODAY - THURSDAY, APRIL 22ND!
Today is the last day of the 2009-2010 legislative session of the Wisconsin Legislature. This is likely the last opportunity to pass and enact into law a long-needed measure to require outside groups who are attempting to influence Wisconsin elections to make public the amount of money they are spending and who they are. The State Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation to do this in January but it needs to be modified and passed in the Assembly and the State Senate again to be in place for the upcoming 2010 elections. And it must be done Today - Thursday!
On January 19, 2010, the Wisconsin State Senate debated and then overwhelmingly passed
Senate Bill 43, bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation requiring disclosure of the donors and regulation of the money utilized by outside special interest groups and individuals that run widely-disseminated campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy during the period of 60 days or less prior to an election.
The huge, bipartisan pro-reform vote was 26 in favor and only 7 opposed. Eight Republicans joined all eighteen Democrats to pass this sweeping reform measure. This electioneering disclosure and regulation legislation mirrors rules approved by the state Government Accountability Board in November 2008. An identical Assembly version of the legislation,
Assembly Bill 63 was passed in the Assembly Committee on Campaign Reform and Elections in June of 2009 on a bipartisan 6 to 1 vote. The Assembly would have considered and passed the measure soon after the Senate action -- and Governor
Jim Doyle, who has repeatedly said he supported this measure, would have signed it into law.
Common Cause in Wisconsin (CC/WI) was the first state reform organization to recognize the critical importance of this reform and we first proposed a version of this measure back in 1997 -- and have been a leader in the effort to get it enacted into law ever since.
But then, on January 21st, a hugely destructive volcano erupted in the nation when the United States Supreme Court issued one of the worst decisions in American legal history -- in a critical, landmark case: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In this bitterly divided 5 to 4 decision, the hypocritically activist majority needlessly and recklessly opened the floodgates to allow corporations and unions to spend vast sums of general treasury money to buy federal and state elections. In one misguided stroke, a one-vote majority reversed more than 100 years of settled law under which federal and state governments could prohibit corporations and unions from spending their general treasury funds to directly influence federal and state elections -- in order to deter corruption and the appearance of corruption by corporations and unions. Chief Justice John Roberts and the disingenuous majority on the court equated corporations with real, individual people and in doing so they have given these new “corporate persons” the ability to influence and even control the outcome of elections through unlimited, unregulated campaign spending.
Roberts and company defied the century-old wisdom and logic of pro-reform champions like President Teddy Roosevelt and Wisconsin’s “Fighting Bob” La Follette who long ago recognized the inherent danger and inequality in allowing corporations to have the same rights as citizens in elections. They had led the way toward the enactment into law of legal, solidly-grounded and reasoned reforms in the early 1900’s to safeguard the nation and this state from total corporate hegemony and domination.
Now, those safeguards have been swept away.
But while we can no longer prohibit corporations and unions from spending on campaigns from their general treasuries – we can and must require the disclosure of the donors funding outside election-oriented expenditures. By providing citizens with knowledge of who may be behind all of the increased outside spending in our elections, they will at least have some idea who is influencing and even buying our elections. This is information citizens are currently missing in Wisconsin when groups run campaign communications masquerading as issue advocacy. Under current law, these groups are not required to disclose their donors.
CC/WI has been working with reform leaders in both the State Senate and the Assembly to adjust Senate Bill 43 to bring it into compliance with the horrendous U.S. Supreme Court decision - Citizens United. Now they must act.
The Wisconsin Legislature needs to consider and pass revised Senate Bill 43 today!. Enactment into law of this major campaign finance reform measure would close the single largest loophole in Wisconsin's loophole-ridden campaign finance laws. And it is absolutely necessary to counter the numerous cancerous and anonymous campaign communications that have undermined legislative, gubernatorial and other statewide elections and, more recently and alarmingly, Wisconsin State Supreme Court elections.
State legislators need to hear from the citizens of Wisconsin ASAP about this issue.
Please contact both your State Senator and your State Representative and tell them to demand that the revised campaign disclosure legislation SB 43 be considered and passed on Thursday so that it will be in effect for the upcoming 2010 elections.
To contact your legislators go here.
If you are not sure who your State Senator and State Representative are, go here
Your voice is crucial and will have a big impact on whether or not this important reform is accomplished!
__________________________________________
Jay Heck, Executive Director
Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
608/256-2686
Want Good Government?
Join Common Cause in Wisconsin!
www.CommonCauseWisconsin.org
Stay informed - Follow CC/WI on Twitter!
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