Public campaign funding program works

Connecticut’s Citizens’ Election Fund, a mechanism intended to eliminate corrupting financial influence from state elections, is alive and well.

And it should stay that way. Granted, the two major party candidates for governor, each a multimillionaire, declined to participate this year, but a slew of other candidates for state office are participating.

And the purpose of the program was not to prevent multimillionaires from running for office — a topic that could bear endless exploration — but rather to prevent special interests, like contractors and others likely to be supplicants for work from the state, from contributing in such quantity as to get their hooks into the officials who dispense that work.

By way of refreshing recollections, what got the program rolling was the corruption scandal that forced Republican Gov. John G. Rowland to resign in 2004 and sent him to prison in 2005 after the governor pleaded guilty to counts of fraud and admitted, among other things, that state contractors had done work for free on his summer home.

In 2005, under the guidance of Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who moved up from lieutenant governor to the top office on Rowland’s departure, the legislature in bipartisan fashion created the public funding program with the express intent of getting special interest money out of Connecticut campaigns. No system is going to be perfect. There were candidate complaints, for instance, that the deep-pocketed candidates were able to get their television advertising on the air long before those participating in the public funding program could get approved for their allocations of public money, thereby putting then at a months-long disadvantage.

While both Democrat Ned Lamont, the successful Greenwich tech entrepreneur, and Republican Bob Stefanowski, of Madison, a former GE and UBS executive, are funding their own campaigns, it was encouraging to see that the State Elections Enforcement Commission, which oversees the public financing program, said both men seem to be playing within the general guidelines of accepting no donations over $100.

Millionaires are always going to be with us. Some of them are going to want to run for office. They don’t need the CEF. But hundreds of other candidates do, and take advantage of it.

The SEEC also said Lamont and Stefanowski are accepting virtually no contributions from state contractors or lobbyists.

The program is working. Some 260 other candidates are on track to join the program this summer and fall. All five lieutenant governor candidates and four of five candidates for attorney general participated in the CEF.

Millionaires are always going to be with us. And some of them are going to want to run for office.

They don’t need the CEF program. But hundreds of other candidates do, and take advantage of it.

The program may need tweaking. Few things in state government don’t.

The SEEC took a 40 percent budget hit in 2011 and it is down three employees to just over 30, since 2014.

This agency is worth supporting. Whatever the cost, it’s worth it to permanently retire the word “Corrupticut,” as Connecticut was once known, out of the vernacular.