{news} 052405StamfordADVOCATE-House Dems unveil plan to reform campaign finance

Thu May 26 08:59:01 EDT 2005

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http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-reform5may24,0,4870472.story?coll=stam-news-local-headlines 

House Democrats unveil plan to reform campaign finance

By Tobin A. Coleman
Staff Writer

May 24, 2005

HARTFORD -- State House Democrats yesterday announced a compromise campaign finance reform bill, but Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell immediately blasted it as looking "more like tinkering than it does serious reform."

Rell's dismissal of the bill and Senate Democratic leaders' acknowledgment that it needs more work before a vote mean it is unlikely the package proposed yesterday will move forward without changes.

Still, after meeting in a Democratic House caucus, Speaker James Amann, D-Milford, Majority Leader Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, and Government Administration and Elections Committee Chairman Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport, held an afternoon news conference saying they had reached agreement with the Senate on combining separate House and Senate bills and were prepared to move forward this week with a vote.

Caruso said there were some concerns of individual Democratic caucus members with the proposal, "But hopefully we can resolve them and move forward with the bill."

The Legislature has been moving in fits and starts on lining up a campaign finance bill vote this year, despite Gov. John Rowland's guilty plea on a corrupt ethics charge for actions that some say were aided by inappropriate campaign finance practices.

At the heart of the compromise is a ban on contributions from state contractors to candidate campaigns if they do business with state departments related to the officeholder's duties. Municipal contractors would be banned from contributing to any municipal campaigns.

Lobbyist contributions would be limited in any race to $100, a significant decrease from limits now, where a lobbyist can contribute, for example, $2,500 to a gubernatorial campaign. Lobbyists also would be banned from soliciting candidate contributions from clients.

Contributions to campaigns also would be limited from individuals, political action committees sponsored by businesses and labor, and from so-called political leadership PACs controlled by politicians or PACs made up of two or more people. Town Democratic or Republican town committees could give unlimited donations to state legislative races, something leaders said they would fix before putting the proposal to a vote.

Tom Swan, director of the Connecticut Citizens' Action Group, a watchdog group that has been active in negotiating campaign finance reform in the Legislature this year, said the Democrats' proposal could be a first step toward real reform. He said the contribution limits in the bill strike a good balance, allowing newcomers to raise enough money to get their names recognized.

"We did not want them to set the limits so low that it became an incumbent protection act, which I don't believe that this does," Swan said.

No actual bill was proposed yesterday, simply a summary of what the House leaders said had been agreed upon. They said bill language was expected later this week.

The proposal also would institute public campaign financing for statewide races in 2010 and for legislative races in 2008. In a compromise between the separate House and Senate bills, public financing, at a cost of about $5 million annually, would be paid for by surcharges on criminal and civil fines and an increase in court filing fees.

To get public financing, candidates would have to agree to spending limits. For example, a gubernatorial candidate would have to agree to spend no more than $1.25 million for a primary and $3 million in a general election. House candidates would agree to a limit of $20,000 in a primary and $30,000 for a general election.

Opponents who did not agree to the spending limits and who spent more would trigger "catch up" public financing under most conditions for the candidate who had agreed to abide by the limits. But bill proponents have offered no mechanism for quickly equalizing spending if a non-limited candidates dumped tens of thousands of dollars into a campaign in its last few days.

Senate Democratic leaders said they still have some reservations.

"I don't have any significant disagreements," said Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn. "I want to make sure that it all works."

Williams said his concern is there are "some very progressive and ambitious proposals" in the bill, for example, the ban on lobbyists soliciting campaign contributions from clients, and he wants to "make sure it doesn't unravel in an untoward way."

The so-called leadership PACs --contributions from many legislators bundled into one committee -- would be dissolved under the Democrats' plan and there would be one PAC allowed per legislator. It is acknowledged by many lawmakers that the PACs, which currently have no limits on how much they can contribute to campaigns, are one way special interests have gotten around contribution limits.

The PACs are often controlled by high-ranking members of the legislature from both parties and can quickly funnel last-minute contributions into floundering campaigns. And their power lives on. Former Speaker of the House Moira Lyons, D-Stamford, for example, who left office in January, still controls a PAC that has $135,000. By law, candidate campaign committees must disperse their funds soon after that campaign is over and not carry money forward to the next campaign. Sometimes that money goes to PACs, which can, in turn, contribute back to that candidate's campaigns in the future.

Rell said she opposed the proposal because it still asks for public expenditures to pay for the campaigns, something she is against with the exception of being seeing if a pilot program could work on a municipal level. Rell said she is "more than disappointed" that the Democrats' plan did not contain her January proposals for reform that would ban in any form campaign contributions from lobbyists and state contractors.

"We have an opportunity of a lifetime. I said that back in January. Everyone agreed that we needed to do something to improve our ethics standing, to make sure that campaign finance was on top of the list of things to be done.," Rell said. "If this is all they can do, I'm deeply disappointed."

Rep. Livvy Floren, R-Greenwich, who is the top House Republican on the GAE committee that has been crafting the bill, said the Democrats proposal doesn't do the job.

"If you want real reform you make the contributions level small and finite, you make them from individuals only," Floren said. "You get rid of all PACs, all ad books, and all contributions from anybody doing business with the state, i.e. contractors and lobbyists." Floren said she is philosophically opposed to public financing of campaigns but would support a local-level pilot program.

Floren also represents part of Stamford.

Rep. Gerald Fox III, D-Stamford, said he likes many parts of the bill, but still has concerns over public financing of political campaigns.

"The bill's evolving and I like it better than I did two weeks ago," Fox said.

Rep. Joseph Mann, D-Norwalk, thinks he probably would vote against the bill based on its public financing provisions.

"My experience is most individuals don't want to pay for our campaigns," Mann said. "I don't like the idea of imposing that on them, even though instead of taking the money out of the budget we would take it when people pay various fines."

House leaders said they hoped a bill would be voted on this week in the Senate and come to them later in the week. But Williams said he could not say when the Senate would be ready to vote on a bill. 
Copyright © 2005, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc. 

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