Editorial: End financial free-for-all in Colorado elections

By THE VOICE OF AURORA
The Aurora Sentinel
Monday, April 26, 2010
http://www.aurorasentinel.com/articles/2010/04/26/opinion/editorials/doc4bd622e088027430153418.txt

Aurora state lawmakers are right on the money in trying to restore at least some semblance of election integrity to a system turned upside down by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.

State Sen. Morgan Carroll and State Rep. Karen Middleton, both Aurora Democrats, are chief sponsors of Senate Bill 203, which would force businesses and labor unions to report political campaign donations and advertising expenditures of more than $1,000 a year. It means that even though the Supreme Court has opened a floodgate of political special interest money by designating corporations and unions as "people," voters will be able to keep track of who's spending money on which candidate or cause, and how much.

The high court in January ended a decades-old ban on unions and corporations spending freely on trying to influence voters. Instead, corporations and others funneled limited amounts of money into political action committees, which state legislatures and even Congress had their sights on as well. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same free-speech rights as people.

The ruling bodes ill for an already sloppy attempt to clear special interests away from the election process. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote clearly what the court had done.

"The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case," he wrote.

Drug companies, teacher unions and "Big Oil" are not people. And the billions of dollars they wield, your dollars, will be used to benefit them in future elections, not you.

In hopes of at least telling voters who and how much is being tossed around for what are certain to be endless TV commercials backing their candidates, sponsors of SB-203 are insisting that corporations and unions report annual election expenditures of more than $1,000. While the average voter will hardly be interested in researching who's backing which candidate or cause, the measure would at least allow the media and others to analyze expenditures and try to inform the voting public about how much money is trying to get their votes, and from where it's coming.

Even though campaign finance reform has been a dismal failure in this country, there were at least some inroads being made on trying to limit the ability of special interests to essentially buy their way onto state legislatures and Congress. It's an outright free-for-all, now.

This bill is the only measure on the horizon that has the ability to retain at least a small sense of fair play during the election this fall.

State lawmakers should move the bill to Gov. Bill Ritter for his signature without delay.

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