Senate Majority Caucus

Senator Ihara yesterday delivered the following speech on the floor in opposition to HB 2003 Relating to Campaign Financing:

Madame President. I rise in opposition to HB 2003, with reservations.

I’d like to first thank the Judiciary Chair for responding positively to concerns that the previous draft did not have transparency requirements for corporate donations to candidates. The reporting requirement now in the bill will give the public access to information on corporate contributions made to candidates.

This information is critical for public understanding on the degree of influence corporations have with successful candidates who make policy-decisions for our state. This is good, but it creates a loophole by avoiding the $1,000 aggregate limit of corporate contributions to its own political action committee. Instead of using the existing corporate PAC reporting requirement, the new reporting requirement is designed to remove the $1,000 corporate aggregate limit and allow them to contribute directly to candidates to the same extent as people like you and me.

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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.

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