Veto Keeps Light On Contributions

It was a little-noted section of a little-noted bill. But it would have done great damage to the public’s right to know about the special interests that influence election campaigns.

To his credit, Gov. Mike Lowry used his veto power to get rid of it.

Here’s the story.

Before the passage of Initiative 134 in 1992, individuals, unions and corporations could give as much as they wanted to any candidate they wanted. The only drawback was the contribution had to be reported. Large contributions from obvious special interests tended to be embarrassing to the candidate (if not the special interest). The public’s right to know and the press’s tendency to highlight large or questionable contributions were the only checks on blatant election buying.

The initiative limited the size of contributions. A union, trade organization, political action committee or corporation could only give an individual legislative candidate $500 in a primary election and $500 in a general election. A candidate for statewide elected office like governor or attorney general could accept $1,000 in the primary and $1,000 in the general.

Yes, that’s still a lot of money. But prior to the initiative when single legislative campaigns were raising $100,000 or more, special interests were being called on to write bigger and bigger checks. In a tight Senate race in Spokane in 1992, for example, Republican John Moyer raised $171,644 including a single contribution of $14,455 from the state medical association. His opponent, Democrat Bill Day, spent $159,992 with $12,250 coming from the Washington Chiropractic Trust.

Moyer won, an event that must have pleased the medical doctors and displeased the chiropractors.

Now, with contributions limited, the doctors and the chiropractors are technically limited in what they can give. But without casting any aspersions on the docs and the back crackers, there are ways around those limits. For example, rather than asking individual practitioners to contribute to the medical association or the chiropractic trust, why not ask them to write individual checks to people on an approved list of candidates?

Rather than receiving a single check for $14,455 from the medical association, a favored candidate would receive 29 checks for $500 from 29 different doctors. For the candidate, it’s the same contribution.

But folks who want to gauge the influence of special interests on individual candidates would be less well-served. That single contribution from the medical association stands out. Those 29 smaller checks may not. This is especially true if the doctors don’t use the courtesy title “Dr.”

This is known in the disclosure business as “bundling.” A special interest collects the individual checks and presents them to a very appreciative candidate. It’s gone on at the federal level for years - at least since 1974 when the postWatergate Congress adopted federal contribution limits.

To at least identify such activities, federal law requires that candidates report the name, occupation and employer of all contributors. That way, if the doctors - or perhaps all of the managers of a big corporation - pony up to a candidate, it becomes apparent by looking at the disclosure reports.

The state Public Disclosure Commission followed the federal government’s lead by demanding that contributors list their occupation and employer along with their checks of $100 or more.

So far, so good.

Then came Senate Bill 5684, a bill that started life as a request by the PDC to make technical corrections to disclosure law. Once in the hands of the Legislature, however, a section was added to cancel the PDC’s good intentions. The bill said only a contributor’s name must be reported.

Lawmakers attempted to cloak their antidisclosure sentiment in the guise of privacy protection. They were aided by a misguided attempt by groups like Hands Off Washington, which formed to oppose anti-gay rights initiatives in 1994. This group argued that disclosing the occupation and employer of contributors to Hands Off Washington could subject them to anti-gay discrimination and harassment.

This was shortsighted on several fronts. It presumes that everyone who contributed to Hands Off Washington is homosexual or lesbian. That is untrue. It also presumes that some people are so determined to discriminate against gays and lesbians, they’ll search public files for information with which to smear them. In truth, people with Hands Off Washington bumper stickers on their cars were more prone to harassment then those who simply wrote a check to the organization.

The PDC made a mistake when it listened to Hands Off Washington and temporarily suspended the full-disclosure requirements last year. The Legislature repeated the error when it limited disclosure in SB 5684.

The commission made up for its error by reimposing the requirements. The Legislature failed to see the light. Lowry showed it to them with a bright red veto pen.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Peter Callaghan McClatchy News Service