If there is one dominant reason for the distrust Californians feel for governments, it is the sense that special interests regularly pour millions of dollars into federal, state and local election campaigns while contriving to hide their identities.
That reality makes Senate Bill 52, the Disclose Act sponsored by Democratic state Sens. Mark Leno of San Francisco and Jerry Hill of San Mateo County, the most important measure state lawmakers will consider this year.
Yes, they’ll face other contentious issues. Gov. Brown’s budget bills will get attention from the public and the Legislature before June is out. So will plans for two massive tunnels to carry Sacramento River water south. No one will ignore the debate about how to divvy up new tax money from last year’s Prop. 30 among public school districts.
Won’t They All Say Yes?
But none will deal with the most basic issue standing between citizens and the politicians they elect, the issue that makes voters distrust ballot proposition campaigns.
The problem is money, which the most formidable state Assembly speaker ever, Jesse Unruh, famously called “the mother’s milk of politics.”
Money has poured into politics in unprecedented quantities since the U.S. Supreme Court’s notorious Citizens United decision, the one declaring corporations the equivalent of human beings, giving them the right to donate limitless amounts to political campaigns so long as those campaigns are not controlled directly by candidates.
This led to so-called independent expenditure committees, which run ads that, at the very least, dovetail with those of the candidates they back and hide the identities of outfits that actually put up the money.
There is no federal initiative process, so Citizens United cannot be reversed by the people. It would take years to pass a Constitutional amendment overturning this, and there is no serious move afoot now for an amendment.
Ah, the Birth of Complete Honesty
Which means anyone worried about honesty in elections, in knowing which candidates are beholden to whom, or what persons or companies are behind any ballot proposition, needs an antidote of a different kind.
The most effective vaccine against political lies and obfuscation is knowledge of who’s paying the piper, because that person or company will call the tunes to which candidates dance.
Enter the Disclose Act. Sponsored last year by former Democratic Assemblywoman Julia Brownley of Ventura County, now in Congress, this measure would force every political TV commercial in California to disclose its three largest funders prominently for six seconds at the start of the ads, rather than using small print at the end. Similar rules would apply to print ads, radio spots, mass mailers, billboards and websites. Ads would have to list a website that shows their 10 largest donors and links to all contributors of $10,000 or more.
Doing this could end many subterfuges in politics, including items like last year’s last-minute dumping of millions of dollars into California ballot proposition campaigns by out-of-state groups with vague names and anonymous donors. There would be no more point for tobacco companies opposed to local anti-smoking regulations, for one example, to call their committee “Californians for Statewide Smoking Regulations,” when it's really out to kill such laws. For the companies themselves would be named in white-on-black lettering in good-sized fonts.
This measure passed the Assembly last year, but time ran out before the Senate considered it. It is back for another try, and because it would revise and enhance the 1974 Political Reform Act, passed by voters as an initiative, it needs two-thirds majorities in both the Assembly and state Senate.
Good as SB52 sounds, it’s not quite a match for a failed measure put forward almost 10 years ago that would have required much the same information, but would have demanded that it be displayed in type matching the largest size anywhere else in the ad.
Other open-government bills are making their way through the Legislature this year, but if this one passes, California voters could quickly become the best informed in the nation. Like many other trends from medical marijuana to lower property taxes, if it happens in California, you can count on it happening in other states soon.
But only if it gets two-thirds votes in both houses of the Legislature, no sure thing when many members depend on obfuscated, big donors.
Mr. Elias may be contacted at tdelias@aol.com. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net