From Scandal, Reforms are Born

From Ashland;

A Start on Campaign Finance Reform
...That's why Assembly Bill 226, the campaign finance reform bill being considered today by the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, should be passed.

The bill does not contain a provision many would like to see: disclosure of the names of donors who fund issue advertising put out be advocacy organizations. But it would never pass.

I gotta ask, why is disclosure such a bogeyman for Republicans? No one is restricting free speech. The simple rule should be, whenever an entity makes a donation, it must be disclosed. Period. Disclosure for all, from George Soros to Steve Forbes.

The only reason AB 226 does not require the names of the donors is because we could not get legislation that contained that requirement scheduled for consideration, let alone passed in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Jay Heck
Common Cause Wisconsin

So what good is AB 226 without disclosure rules?

It would require disclosure of how much outside groups spend during election cycles.

OK, that is a step towards more meaningful disclosure.

It creates a system of public financing, creating an endowment for funding campaigns and increasing the campaign check-off to $5.

Increase it to $100...that phony reform move the Democrats insist on will never increase deposits to fund the new WECF public grant levels paid to candidates who qualify.

It would prohibit fundraising for campaigns while the state budget is being put together.

Assembly Speaker John Gard raised $240,000 in his run for U.S. House over the past three months...The new figures mean Gard, R-Peshtigo, has raised $465,000 since he announced earlier this year that he intended to seek the 8th Congressional District seat.

Well, at least Speaker Gard had to disclose raising nearly a half million dollars as he directed the Republican version of the state budget this past summer.

It would ban legislative campaign committees and prohibit trading money between political action committees.

Ban legislative campaign committees? Then what would the caucuses do with their staffs? This one is longgggg overdue.

Wisconsin is still recovering from a political scandal that has seen state senators, assemblymen and women and their aides have careers ruined because the quest for campaign cash consumed them. It's in the public interest to create a political system that prevents that from happening again.

The Wisconsin State Journal's Dee Hall, among the best investigative reporters in the state, will keep the heat on state legislators with her reporting of this and future scandals currently percolating; increasing the likelihood that legislators facing reelection will distance themselves by promoting campaign reforms.

Both sides are preparing for an Oct. 31 trial before Circuit Judge David Flanagan that could stretch on for five weeks and include as many as 200 witnesses.

Among those expected to be called: dozens of lobbyists, about a dozen current and former lawmakers and Chvala himself, who plans to appear as an expert witness for the defense on the workings of the Wisconsin State Senate.

Chvala is charged with 19 felonies in a case alleging the Madison Democrat extorted campaign cash from lobbyists, illegally raised political donations in his Capitol office, used Senate Democratic Caucus staff to run political campaigns and illegally coordinated so-called "independent" expenditures with those campaigns.