Lt. Gov. Val Oveson and a hearty group of volunteers will once again try to write legislation regulating influence peddling in public issues, like the tax-cutting initiatives of a year ago.
Good luck to them. They'll need it.At issue are PICs - political issue committees.
PICs can come in all shapes and sizes, but most resemble the Taxpayers For Utah, the group of concerned businessmen and associations that opposed the tax-cutting initiatives last year, and the Utah Tax Limitation Coalition, the citizen group that proposed tax reduction.
Utah has no laws governing financial disclosure of such PICs, and Oveson and his new Election Law Task Force believe there should be.
Oveson has fought this battle before.
A 1985 task force he organized proposed a PIC law, which was soundly defeated by lawmakers.
He may have a little better chance this time around.
For one thing, the Utah Tax Limitation Coalition openly opposed some legislators' re-election in 1988. Almost all of those lawmakers won, and they may be interested in passing a PIC law that would require such public issue groups to file public financial records.
The lawmakers could then find out who was giving to the groups and how much. They could also see if the money was being funneled to their legislative opponents. (I'm not saying that the coalition did that; leaders of the coalition say their limited funds went toward promoting the tax-cutting initiatives, not to defeat legislators.)
Second, the 1985 PIC law failed, in part, because of concerns how it may impact the LDS Church.
Some lawmakers were afraid that if the church - or any other group that normally doesn't get involved in politics - did take a public stand on a controversial ballot issue, the church's or group's finances might have to be revealed.
Specifically, many legislators worried that if the church worked to defeat an equal rights, legalized lottery or liquor-by-the-drink ballot proposition, the PIC law would require that members' tithing rec-ords be made public.
Oveson says that argument was a "red herring," purposely raised by opponents of the PIC bill to ensure its defeat. Whatever it was, it worked.
Now Oveson says the new PIC proposal will outline specifically that any group organized for one purpose - say, religion - won't have to reveal its members' finances if the group decides to take a political stand.
However, if a church or labor union or other association pays full-time staff to influence a political issue, those expenditures, as well as other expenditures made to influence the public debate, would have to be reported.
"The LDS Church or anyone else would have to set up a PIC and would have to report monies spent on a ballot issue," Oveson says. "If that offends some people, so be it. The public has a right to know who is influencing these important matters."
We'll see if Utah lawmakers agree with that enlightened opinion come January's Legislature.