During the past few years, our legislators and governors have grappled with tight budgets. Balancing funding between important government services such as education, healthcare, and public protection is difficult.
When facing these difficult choices, it is hard to argue that some of your hard-earned tax dollars should be spent to fund political campaigns of Kentucky’s gubernatorial candidates. Fortunately for Kentucky taxpayers, in 2003 the General Assembly placed the interests of our children, seniors, and all Kentuckians ahead of their fellow political brethren by refusing to allow taxpayer dollars to fund political campaigns. Had these campaigns not been subsidized in 1995, over $7 million would have remained in Kentucky’s coffers—money that could have provided 160 new teachers across the state for one year, eighty new notebook computers for each school district across the commonwealth, or fully fund the prestigious Governor’s Scholars Program for four years.
Although the legislature acted in 2003, they must continue to vote on this issue every two years because the decision was wrapped into a budget bill. The taxpayers of Kentucky deserve better. You deserve to have this law permanently stricken from the books so that your tax dollars will no longer be wasted to fund attack ads and bumper stickers.
When this law was created by the General Assembly in 1992, advocates believed that it would level the financial playing field for many candidates for governor. But money is much like traffic—by closing one avenue, the money is simply rerouted to another. This was certainly the case in the 1995 gubernatorial election when donations were simply funneled through the candidates’ political parties. Similarly in this year’s presidential election, money was funneled through unregulated 527 organizations.
Advocates also stated that without public financing of campaigns, the Governor’s mansion was “up for sale” and that more candidates would run for office if taxpayers footed the bill. What actually occurred was just the opposite. In 1995, the first year of the taxpayer subsidized campaigns, only four major candidates chose to run for Governor. In 2003, without taxpayer help, six major candidates ran for the office, and the Governor’s Mansion did not go to the highest bidder (in fact, he dropped out just days before the primary).
The solution to campaign finance issues does not come from wastefully spending taxpayer money to subsidize campaigns. Instead, it comes from making the process transparent. Citizens, the news media, and even the candidates’ opponents can then look to determine whether candidates have accepted inappropriate donations.
In order to create this transparency, more frequent and accessible reporting of donations should be required of candidates. Recently, the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance created a task force to study campaign finance issues in Kentucky. This task force, which has bi-partisan representation, will explore a variety of campaign finance issues—from taxpayer funded political campaigns to reporting issues similar to those mentioned above. I am hopeful that this task force will recommend important changes to our campaign finance system so that citizens have open and corruption-free elections while candidates will not be significantly burdened in the process. These recommendations will be ready for the General Assembly to consider in their 2006 session.
Even though the next gubernatorial election is three years away, potential candidates need to know what rules will govern the race in 2007. That is why it is critically important that action be taken immediately to dismantle the laws that place the burden of taxpayer funded political campaigns upon our citizens. Senator Damon Thayer, chairman of the Senate State Government Committee, is sponsoring a bill during this session of the General Assembly that would protect taxpayer interests by removing this language from our statues. Passing this legislation now will free up time for the Registry task force to analyze other important issues. For the best interest of our citizens, I urge the General Assembly to pass this bill in an expeditious manner. If you agree, I urge you to call your legislators on the Legislator Message Line at 1-800-372-7181.
Simply put: taxpayer funded political campaigns did not achieve what it set out to do. When given the choice of funding education or healthcare for our citizens, or using taxpayer dollars to purchase attack ads and bumper stickers, I think the choice is clear. It is time that we set our priorities straight and no longer fund welfare for politicians.