Campaign Finance Bill ‘Very Small Start’ Measure’s Checkoff Provision Called Unfair To Organized Labor

Contribution limits and new requirements on organizations using payroll checkoff to amass campaign war chests cleared the Idaho Senate on Monday. Critics call the limits meaningless and the payroll checkoff provision unfair to organized labor.

“There’s a lot more to campaign finance reform than we see in this bill,” Republican John Hansen of Idaho Falls said. “This is just a very small start.”

Although supporters called the bill serious campaign reform that would check the multimillion-dollar campaigns for governor and head off an initiative campaign for tougher standards, contribution records from the last gubernatorial campaign showed the limits would have had no real impact.

Still, it was sent to the House on a 29-6 votes. Gary Schroeder of Moscow was the lone Republican to join the five Democrats in opposition.

“The amounts being spent on legislative races or a state race are obscene,” Republican Bob Lee of Rexburg said. “People are spending a million dollars on a statewide race. This will stop some of that.”

But capping contributions at $5,000 for statewide primary and general election campaigns, as the bill does, would have affected only 19 of the 3,500 contributions received by GOP Gov. Phil Batt and Democrat Larry EchoHawk in 1994. And of the $1.4 million each raised, Batt would have been denied only $53,000 and EchoHawk $137,000.

Overall in 1994, records show that of the 11,600 donors contributing nearly $7 million to 199 state and legislative candidates, only 97 contributions to 47 candidates would have had to be reduced by $434,000. And 26 of those candidates lost their elections.

Reform advocates such as United Vision for Idaho maintain any limits can be circumvented, and while not offering any alternatives their position indicated the only real option is public financing of campaigns - something Idaho has flatly refused to consider.

The bill also requires expenditures independent of candidates or issues to be publicly disclosed before as well as after elections, precludes candidates from converting campaign money to personal use and requires organizations using payroll checkoff to have members reconfirm annually their support of the political activity.

That drew the limited fire from Schroeder and the bill’s Democratic critics, who claimed it was an attempt by the GOP majority to punish the Idaho Education Association and unions for their general support of Democrats.

“It’s the only part of this bill that is political, blatantly political,” Schroeder said. “It’s an antiunion bill. It’s anti-labor.”

But an attempt to strip that provision from the bill was overwhelmingly rejected by the GOP, whose leaders warned that any changes would doom the legislation.