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donmc's blog
New angle for Conflicts of Interest & Campaign Finance
Monday, December 24th, 2007
donmc
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Comments
Robert Wechsler says:
Wed, 2007-12-26 17:57
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There are two principal ways of dealing with this problem of favoring campaign contributors. One, the most common, is simply requiring the disclosure of which contractors or lobbyists (and less often developers) have made contributions, at least over a certain amount (which is often high). This requires a lot of vigilance, and even then, nothing can actually be done.
The second way is to prevent contractors, lobbyists, and developers from making campaign contributions, or preventing PACs from making contributions. But there are first amendment free speech problems here. Public financing programs can be useful in this situation, because they tie limitations such as no business or PAC contributions to the voluntary decision to join the program and get public money.
Zionsville's third approach could be effective, depending on how it is handled. It would, for example, effectively prevent contributions from being made by developers to potentially sympathetic members of boards that deal with property issues. But how would it limit officials, for example, from putting pressure on procurement people to give contracts to campaign contributors?
It doesn't look like the experiment in Zionsville will hold up. It sounds as if the new council will get rid of the new conflict of interest clause, probably arguing, as one member does in the article, that it's hard to know who gave a contribution. That's disingenuous. They know. Sizeable contributions from contractors and developers and lobbyists don't just show up in the mail to be opened by a kid and deposited in the bank without the politician knowing.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics