{news} 20% of CT for Greens to get matching campaign finance!!!

[Green Party-CT]

Closing In On Election Reform 

Top Democrats Back Public Financing Plan 

ADVERTISERS
---------------------------------
Advertise on ctnow
-->By MARK PAZNIOKAS
And CHRISTOPHER KEATING Courant Staff Writers

November 29 2005

House and Senate Democratic leaders have agreed on sweeping campaign-finance reforms that will be put to a vote Wednesday, potentially ending a stalemate that has dominated Connecticut politics since June.

Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, and House Speaker James A. Amann, D-Milford, pledged for the first time Monday to gather enough votes from majority Democrats to pass and send a reform bill to Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell by week's end.

The bill would ban campaign contributions from state contractors and lobbyists and create a voluntary system of publicly financing campaigns for every state office, beginning with legislative races in 2008 and contests for governor and other statewide offices in 2010.

"On Wednesday," Amann said, "history will be made."

No legislature in the nation has been willing to adopt public financing - which is intended to increase competition for legislative seats as it lessens the influence of special interests - for its own campaigns. Voters in Arizona and Maine have passed public-financing laws through petitions and referendums.

Rell and legislative Democrats have sparred over campaign finance reform most of the year, but the governor signaled a willingness Monday to embrace the measure - if a summary released by Democrats accurately describes the legislation.

"It's a win for all of us if we can get a bill that is appropriate and that everybody can agree to," Rell said.

House Minority Leader Robert M. Ward, R-North Branford, and Senate Minority Leader Louis C. DeLuca, R-Woodbury, were not as sanguine, though the quick vote called by Democrats gives them little time to mobilize opposition.

Williams and Amann announced their agreement with great fanfare, appearing before television cameras with Lt. Gov. Kevin B. Sullivan, the House and Senate majority leaders, and reform advocates who seemed willing to believe that passage was imminent after numerous false starts.

"This proposal, if enacted, would represent the strongest set of campaign finance reforms ever passed in the nation and put Connecticut at the forefront of states with meaningful campaign finance reform laws," said Andy Sauer, executive director of Common Cause of Connecticut.

Legislators said the system would cost an estimated $16 million annually, providing public grants to qualified candidates ranging from $25,000 for House races to $3 million for a gubernatorial general-election campaign. The Democratic plan would create a special election fund, paid for with revenue the state now collects from unclaimed property.

Democrats and Republicans who opted to participate in the public-financing system would qualify by meeting financial thresholds that demonstrated public support.

To qualify for $3 million, a candidate for governor would have to raise $250,000 in increments of $100 or less, with 90 percent of the money coming from within Connecticut. No money would be paid until a candidate qualified for either a primary or general-election ballot, but the rules for exploratory committees would be liberalized to allow early campaigning.

Minor-party and petitioning candidates would have great difficulty qualifying for public funds. A petitioning candidate would have to gather signatures from 10 percent of all voters to obtain a partial grant and 20 percent for a full grant.

"It's unfairly restrictive and quite possibly unconstitutional," Ward said. "It's a clear way to stop third-party participation in the electoral process."

But Democrats said the language was borrowed from federal election laws and the restrictions were necessary to prevent fringe candidates from collecting public grants.

Joseph Brennan of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association said he feared that the legislation, by barring lobbyist and contractor contributions, would erode the influence of business at the General Assembly. The legislation did nothing to restrict the ability of labor unions to influence campaigns by arranging for volunteers and other in-kind contributions, Brennan said.

The attention paid to details such as minor-party candidates and the competition between business and labor are signs that legislators and lobbyists are finally taking campaign finance reform seriously.

On the last day of the regular legislative session in June, the House and Senate passed competing campaign finance bills, a maneuver that allowed a majority of legislators to vote for reform knowing that passage was impossible.

Rell revived the issue, creating a special bipartisan study group this summer and then calling the legislature back into special session in September. But passage seemed unlikely until Monday.

Williams had been meeting with senators for weeks to line up support, but Amann was widely seen as reluctant to push his caucus toward legislation that would remake election laws under which Democrats have thrived, winning nearly two-thirds of the seats in both chambers.

Passage requires 76 votes in the House and 19 in the Senate. By Amann's own count nearly two weeks ago, fewer than 60 of the 99 House Democrats were leaning toward a finance bill.

One question is whether Amann, who frequently defers to the will of the majority, will exert the leadership necessary for campaign reform's passage.

The reform bill almost certainly would weaken the influence of the House and Senate leaders, who use political action committees to funnel lobbyist donations to rank-and-file members, often earning their loyalty.

Under current law, those PACs can make unlimited contributions.

By banning contributions from lobbyists and contractors, instead of restricting them, the Democrats bowed to a demand by Rell. A complete ban, however, is likely to be challenged in court as infringing on lobbyists' and contractors' free-speech rights. 
Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant 

---------------------------------



===========================================================
      THE GREEN PARTY OF CONNECTICUT is the third largest political party in CT. The Greens are also the third largest political party in the US, with 220 Greens officeholders in 27 states. Over 80 countries in world have Green Parties. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is Kenya's assistant minister for environment and an elected Green Party member.
===========================================================
National Committee member from Connecticut: Tim McKee (860) 324-1684

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/private/ctgp-news/attachments/20051129/4a2ec0ae/attachment.html>