Those who care about being able to track the relationship between money and politics have something to cheer about.
As I reported this winter (“Destroying the Candidate’s Paper Trail,” Working Waterfront, February-March 2009), clerks in Maine’s largest towns and cities have been destroying the campaign finance disclosures of municipal candidates in as little as two years after an election on the questionable advice of officials at the Maine State Archives.
This has made it impossible to trace long-term links between elected officials and the property developers, labor unions, lobbyists, activists, and others with whom they deal-which is the entire purpose of their existence.
But last week, members of a key legislative committee reversed themselves to endorse a bill that will correct the problem. L.D 1100 would place these important documents in the custody of the state ethics commission, the body that already retains (and makes available online) all disclosures for county and state office.
“It got voted out [of committee] unanimously and the next step will be for it to show up on the senate and house floors,” says the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Justin Alfond (D-Portland), who expects it will pass both houses as early as next week without a roll call vote. “Typically with unanimous committee votes, there’s no roll call.”
At an initial hearing in early April, members of the State and Local Government Committee rejected L.D. 1100 by 12 votes to 1, apparently because they were unaware that any added costs to the state would be paid for by fees collected from lobbyists, rather than taxpayers. But committee chair Sen. Deborah Simpson (D-Lewiston/Auburn) kept the bill alive and helped convince her colleagues to take a second look.
Alfond says this financing mechanism also means the bill can skip a hurdle to becoming law-winning the endorsement of the appropriations committee. As it has the backing of both the ethics commission and city clerks, it’s very likely to become law, preventing the destruction of disclosures and ensuring they can reviewed online.
“We are taking responsibilities from local communities and absorbing them at the state level, ensuring better efficiency and transparency,” he says. “So often we are mandating local communities to do various things, but here we have an ‘un-mandate.'”
-Colin Woodard is an award-winning journalist and author of The Lobster Coast, The Republic of Pirates, and Ocean’s End. www.colinwoodard.com