From the Weber County Forum back burner we'll focus in this eye opening 11/29/10 editorial from the Salt Lake Tribune for those readers concerned about the corrupting influence of special interest campaign donations on the Utah legislative process. Here's the lede, which breaks out some startling figures:
To many Utah legislators, local is better — except when it comes to campaign donations. One-third of the lawmakers who will take their seats on Capitol Hill in the next general session didn’t raise a dime in campaign donations from their own district. Half raised less than 1 percent from constituents.The editorial goes on with several recommendations to "encourage candidates to raise money from more sources, making them less beholden to any one."
Overall, only $1 of every $20 in campaign donations came from the folks in the district. That means all the rest came from corporations, labor unions, political action committees, individuals outside the district, political parties, lobbyists, other politicians. In other words, special interests.
This is worrisome because these contributors don’t give money out of the goodness of their hearts. They give it to buy influence.
Read the full editorial here:
• Campaign cashAs regular WCF readers are well aware, the UEG Ethics Initiative, which would impose reasonable individual campaign contribution limits for our state legislature, and would ban corporate contributions entirely, among other things, has technically qualified for the ballot for November of 2012. In the meantime however we believe the above-linked SLTrib editorial provides one more reason for enactment of this important citizens initiative.
