Campaign Cash: Full Disclosure

Who’s snoozing in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House?

Who’s in bed with developers in Ventura or Thousand Oaks?

Citizens demand, and deserve, to know.

The out-of-control gush of campaign contributions into politics at every level has washed away many Americans’ faith in their elected leaders and threatens to further undermine the foundation of democracy. Efforts to stem the tide are underway from Washington, D.C., to Sacramento to Ventura City Hall.

When Ventura voters got a chance to vote on a local campaign-finance reform law in 1995, 81% favored it. That law forbade organized groups from contributing to City Council elections. This summer the council voted to reverse that provision of the law, after the city attorney questioned its constitutionality.

Now Councilman Steve Bennett plans to take the issue to the voters again in another ballot initiative.

It’s the right cause, but the wrong weapon. What’s needed here isn’t less, but more.

Not less participation in the electoral process by citizens, whether they act individually or together, but more disclosure about who is shelling out money and what they are getting in return.

New technology plus the vastly heightened public outrage over what appears to be payola could make this work.

A bill that would require the posting of state campaign contributions and spending on the Internet, where watchdog groups and individual citizens could easily see who is bankrolling each candidate, has passed the California Senate but faces roadblocks in the Assembly. It’s a first step in the right direction, and Ventura County’s representatives there ought to push it forward.

Closer to home, Thousand Oaks’ site on the World Wide Web already includes each candidate’s campaign reports from the most recent City Council election, in 1994, and the current recall campaign.

All contributions of $250 or more must be reported within 72 hours and the reports are promptly scanned and available for viewing online.

In Ventura, the City Council has asked the city clerk to begin posting campaign reports on the city’s Web site by July 1, 1999--too late for the election coming up in November. Currently, reports are kept in fat binders at City Hall, where citizens can sort through them page by page.

The value of all these efforts depends on how promptly and completely candidates file their reports. Enforcement has been lax and penalties few under the old system. That should be stepped up substantially. The Ventura vote dramatizes how urgently the public wants things cleaned up.

If limits are to be placed on political action committees, they should be in the form of greater disclosure that helps citizens and the media look behind the facade to see whom each PAC truly represents.

The Times strongly supports campaign finance reform, particularly the elimination of “soft money” contributions to political parties.

But attempting to legislate who may and may not contribute simply creates a new tangle of problems and does little to restore citizens’ faith in their representatives.