Campaign bill provides needed sunshine

Though it has some flaws, the campaign-finance bill passed by the Legislature this session provides a needed dose of sunshine, as our editorial on today’s Opinion page notes. The bill requires candidates and political action committees to report within 48 hours large donations they receive during the 11 days prior to the election (now, those donations aren’t made public until months after the election). It requires taped phone calls touting certain candidates to reveal their sponsors. The bill also raises the contribution cap for candidates; many Democrats argued that will help incumbents, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me, particularly in exchange for greater disclosure. Unfortunately, the bill doesn’t require “issue advocacy” groups to report their electioneering activities. So will voters be able to learn exactly who is bankrolling groups such as Americans for Prosperity? “You’ll never know that,” said Carol Williams, executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission. “Never, never, never.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

5 Comments

  1. Joe Williams
    Posted May 13, 2006 at 12:31 am | Permalink

    George Soros anybody? My hand is out!

  2. alex
    Posted May 13, 2006 at 1:02 am | Permalink

    Why do you worry so much about americans for prosperity? But you have no problem with the money that is funneled to a candidate by one group who uses their spouses, family members and sometimes executives of a company to bypass the contribution caps.

    If you check out the governor you will see that Phil Ruffin (owner of the greyhound track) has funneld thousands of dollars to the governor through family members and through multiple pacs. Dr. Tiller has done the same thing.

    What about business that ask for tax increases because they are dependent on the government for their business. Look at how much money Sennesy music makes off of schoold districts for example.

    But a group that works for the people is a major target. Get serious about real reform.

  3. ProudMan
    Posted May 13, 2006 at 7:06 am | Permalink

    The proverbal sunshine or transparency is the best campaign reform.

  4. JohnGalt
    Posted May 13, 2006 at 4:49 pm | Permalink

    Let’s have some sunshine on how many tax payer dollars are being spent on lobbying.

    Let’s have some sunshine on how much time is spent by govt. employees to lobby the legislature.

    Let’s require the Wichita Eagle to assign a value to their positive and negative editorials and publish those campaign contributions.

    Why is the Wichita Eagle so afraid of anonymous free speech?

  5. KS Meadowlark
    Posted May 13, 2006 at 8:13 pm | Permalink

    While I have been a critic of the Ethics Commission (such as the strange way the Senate President had a new nominee go ahead of the Speaker’s nominee for unexplained reasons — http://www.saljournal.com/blogs/?p=742), the Ethics Commission should be commended for making most PAC and candidate contribution reports public starting in Dec 2005:http://www.kansasmeadowlark.com/2005/12-23.htm

    Before this time such reports had to be purchased for $0.50/page at the Secretary of State’s Office, which effectively hid them from the public.

    Most of the political money reports can be seen here online:http://www.kansas.gov/ethics/FiledRptsFrmsHm.htm

    Lobbyist reports are online here:Searchable new/amended data reported by lobbyists is available at: http://www.kansas.gov/ethics/LobbyistExpenditures.htm

    Summary of Expenditures Reported by Registered Lobbyist (pdf file – 8.52MB)http://www.kansas.gov/ethics/GECSummeries/LobFrontPage04102006.pdf

    Legislative and Judicial Recipients for March, 2006 as disclosed on Lobbyist Employment and Expenditures Reports (pdf file – 39.16MB)http://www.kansas.gov/ethics/GECSummeries/LobRecipients04102006.pdf

    So starting in 2006 the shine shines much more on Kansas political money than before.

    The reforms are welcome and the Wichita Eagle should take pride in pushing for such reforms (unlike the Kansas City Star, who ignores many political money stories).