Utah gets a D- grade for its campaign finance laws. But, hey, it could be worse. Wyoming got an F.
While most of this week's National Conference of State Legislatures meetings in the Salt Palace are about governing, the nation's legislators spend a lot of time worrying about their re-elections, too.
And Wednesday, several session discussions concerned elections, money and campaign finance laws.
"We know this is hard for you," said Linda Meggers, director of Georgia's Reapportionment Office, at one NCSL session on campaign finance disclosure. "For (campaign finance disclosure) is dear to people running for office."
Seventeen states got a failing grade in the report, perhaps in part because sitting lawmakers don't want to require more disclosure of their own campaign finances.
But whether states have adequate campaign finance reporting laws or not, the 2004 elections for legislators across the nation are vital, leaders in both political parties told an NCSL news conference.
While the media will concentrate on the battle between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., for the White House, critical congressional and legislative races are also going on.
Expensive battles
Recent elections have seen Republicans gaining majorities in state legislatures. And in a dozen or so states, the 2004 elections "are big, huge, gigantic" in determining whether Republicans or Democrats control the House, Senate or both houses of a legislature, said Tim Storey, NCSL senior fellow.
Utah is not one of them. On a large U.S. map with states whose legislatures are up for play this election, Utah is solidly beige, joining about two dozen other states with no chance that the current legislative majority will switch.
Republicans hold two-thirds majorities in both the Utah House and Senate. Democrats haven't had a majority in either body since 1978.
But, said Storey, the state House, Senate or both bodies in the legislatures in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado (among others) could swing this election. Republicans now have majorities in both houses in 21 states; Democrats hold both houses in 17 states and the legislature is split between the parties in 11 states. Nebraska has a non-partisan Legislature.
In one sense, Utahns should be happy about their legislative contests: They don't cost all that much. You can still run and win a Utah House seat for around $25,000, although some hotly contested races are much more than that.
But state Rep. Mike Veon, Pennsylvania House Democratic Whip and treasurer of the national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said a contested state House race there runs between $700,000 and $1 million per candidate every two years. The DLCC will spend around $10 million in targeted legislative races across the nation this fall. Alex Johnson of the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee said his counter-DLCC group will spend about $5 million.
Room for improvement
With such huge legislative fund raising and spending going on, it is understandable that campaign finance disclosure is important business in the larger states, as was pointed out Wednesday in one NCSL session.
Utah has some of the most liberal campaign finance laws in the nation, a study by the California Voter Foundation found in 2003. It ranked 33rd out of 50 states in disclosure, getting the barely passing D- grade, Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, told a morning meeting.
In one job or another, Stern has been helping states and cities write campaign finance/ethics laws for 30 years.
"No one can write a perfect campaign disclosure law," he said.
The bad news is that most states aren't even close to one. The good news, there is real opportunity for improvement.
Utah falls short in a number of areas, the study shows. The biggest failing, said Stern, is that candidates for Legislature, governor and other state offices don't have to list their contributors' employers or employment title.
"So you get $1,000 from John Jones in L.A. What does that mean?" Know the employers and job title, and you can follow special interest money, maybe even discover illegal doings the candidate himself may not know about, he said.
In a recent Los Angeles City Council election, a campaign intern noticed that a gardener and other lower-income people all gave a councilman $500 in one day. Through information on the contribution list, she contacted the people, asking why the relatively large contribution — the largest allowed by an individual under city ordinance.
She found out that bosses of a Taiwanese hotel firm which wanted a zoning change for a new hotel had walked the street giving $525 in cash to people and asking them in turn to donate $500 to the council candidate. The result: an $896,000 "campaign money laundering" fine for the hotel firm, Stern said.
Utah's loopholes
Under Utah law, state candidates can accept any amount of money from anyone, including businesses, PACs and unions, and spend the money any way they wish, even give it to themselves if they want.
Utah also doesn't require last-minute contribution disclosures, as many states do, noted Stern. That means in Utah and other states with similar loopholes, candidates can time their cashing of large donation checks until after the pre-final election reports are filed, and citizens don't know about the giving until after Election Day.
In the mid-1990s, a state Senate candidate accepted more than $15,000 from a group of unions just after the last campaign filing deadline, the giving only showing up on a post-election filing.
While some may see the report with so many "Ds" and "Fs" as depressing, Stern said he's actually pleased how most states are using online election sites for campaign finance disclosure. You can read Utah campaign finance reports online now at www.elections.utah.gov, for example.
But Missouri has spent a lot of money trying to computerize its paper campaign finance filings and still doesn't have them right, he added.
"Electronic reporting is the Holy Grail of campaign finance disclosure," he said. "And many legislators don't like people looking at their disclosures" and so have hampered or harmed the effort.
Meggers said the Georgia secretary of state was the most unpopular person in the Legislature when she started putting legislators' reports online.
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com