Senator Ihara gave the following speech on the floor on March 3, 2010:
Madame President. I rise in support of Senate Bill 2251, but with reservations.
First, I’d like to note that the bill description conceals what it actually does. The description says it “updates, organizes, and clarifies current campaign financing laws”, but the bill actually changes the current law in several important ways.
SB 2251 deletes an existing provision that limits corporate contributions to PACs at an aggregate amount of $1,000. The bill also deletes the requirement that all corporations must register as a political action committee.
While this bill is consistent with last year’s “Tavares” appeals court ruling. The ruling allows corporations to make direct contributions to candidates – but this bill does not provide for any reporting requirement.
The purpose of our campaign finance law is to provide transparency so the public can easily learn the funding sources of campaigns. For many years until the Tavares case, voters could conveniently see the expenditures corporations made to influence elections. But now there’s the cumbersome task of looking up dozens of candidate reports to tally how much a corporation contributes.
