Excellent editorial in this morning's Deseret News, calling upon the legislature to "demonstrate a commitment to transparent government by changing these (Utah campaign finance disclosure) laws." From the editorial:
We have long been advocates for transparency in elections, rather than tedious and ineffective limits on donations. When laws limit how much someone can contribute to a campaign or how much a candidate can spend, the advantage always goes to the incumbent. In elections, money equals exposure. Information, on the other hand, helps voters enter polling booths fully informed.Being the curious type, we navigated to the Campaign Disclosure Project (CDP) website; and yesiree, Utah's campaign disclosure law did indeed score an "F" grade as of the year 2007. According to the CDP site, Utah is in fact one of only six states receiving "failing" grades. That's quite a distinction -- one in which all Utah legislators must take great pride, we're sure.
But in Utah, the public has neither transparency nor limits.
The Center for Governmental Studies, together with the UCLA Law School, the California Voter Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, recently ranked states according to how well their campaign disclosure laws inform and protect the public. Utah came in 45th of the 50 states and earned an F grade.
There's plenty of interesting information on the CDP site, including this Campaign Finance Disclosure Model Law. In the unlikely event that any Utah legislator ever takes heed of the growing public outcry for wholesale campaign finance disclosure reform, we believe this "model law" would be a great "starter template."
We congratulate the Deseret News for for keeping the need for significant campaign disclosure reform in the public discussion forefront. We likewise encourage all Utah media to continue flogging this topic. If all goes well, this issue will rise to the surface during the upcoming 2008 general election campaign, forcing the legislature to finally address it during the 2009 legislative session.
