Campaign laws must improve

A recent investigative report’s findings about campaign spending in Pennsylvania gave voters information that those running for office should have been providing.

A team of reporters for Spotlight PA and the Caucus reviewed thousands of pages of records and found that in 2016 through 2018, candidates for seats in the Pennsylvania General Assembly spent nearly $3.5 million on foreign trips, sports tickets, limousines, pricey dinners, fine wines and liquor and country club memberships.

The report also noted that those expenses had not been itemized for review by the public — nor is it clear that Pennsylvania law even demands that voters and donors get detailed descriptions of campaign spending.

“Asked about the lack of detail in their reports,” the report said, “some legislators vowed to be more transparent, while others denied there was a problem.”

Whatever one thinks of Pennsylvania’s campaign laws — which include no contribution limits nor, as the report notes, “an explicit ban on spending campaign cash for personal use” — their logic demands better disclosure.

The rationale behind unlimited campaign fundraising and spending is that, as long as voters know who’s giving and how candidates are spending it, the public has the power to decide whether a candidate is acting appropriately.

Even if one accepts the state’s current loose rule on campaign accounts — that they be used solely for “influencing the outcome of an election” — Pennsylvania voters deserve better disclosure.

The Spotlight PA/Caucus report notes a lack of oversight and staff to do it.

“Just three people in the Pennsylvania Department of State are responsible for keeping track of roughly 3,000 registered campaign committees and upward of 10,000 to 12,000 campaign finance filings in busy election years,” it notes. “Its power is ‘solely administrative,’ with no authority to issue advisory opinions or impose fines beyond a $10-per-day late fee for reports, a department spokesperson said.”

Looking at it this way is enough to make taxpayers throw up their hands at the hopelessness of reform. Should the Department of State hire a team to track campaign spending and add temporary workers during big election years?

There is another way to reform the system — one more in keeping with the no-limits, fulldisclosure approach some of our officials now only pretend to accept.

Candidates for public office in Pennsylvania are required to file a Statement of Financial Interests listing their sources of income. Failure to file a report carries a $25 fine for each day late up to a maximum $250.

Other violations of the Pennsylvania Public Official and Employee Ethics Act — such as conflicts of interest or the giving, getting or soliciting of things of value related to a public office or job — are subject to criminal penalties and fines.

The Pennsylvania Ethics Commission is charged with enforcing deadlines on the filing of financial interest forms and investigating complaints filed with it regarding other violations.

Rather than expanding the Department of State, the law on campaign spending reports could be amended to demand fuller disclosure — requiring itemized reports on all expenditures over a certain amount. And the Ethics Commission could be made responsible for investigating complaints about a campaign’s failure to disclose.

The Ethics Commission would not have to rule — as the FEC does — on whether a campaign’s spending is in keeping with the law. Its responsibility would be solely to determine whether the report contained sufficient detail to let the public and donors know how the campaign spent its money.

Then Pennsylvania law should be changed in one additional way: Impose fines for failures to fully disclose campaign spending. Such fines should be significant, they should be paid by the candidates and their top campaign officials, and failure to pay them should result in prison time.

— MediaNews Group