Posted on 01/24/2006 10:10:30 AM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO -- Here we go again.
Scandals are popping out in Washington, D.C., like blossoms on the cherry trees.
On their heels come the inevitable calls for reforms to stop whatever it is the bad guys are doing.
House Republican leaders are talking about new laws to keep lobbyists like Jack Abramoff from buying votes with everything from a free lunch to a consulting contract for a congressman's wife.
But before we let the politicians start trying to reform the political system, it would be useful to remember some painful history lessons.
When politicians fool around with political reform, the political system nearly always winds up in a bigger mess than it was before.
Remember the last political reform measure you voted for?
In 2000, Californians overwhelmingly approved a political "reform" measure, Proposition 34, that promised to limit campaign contributions. It was was written and placed on the ballot by the state Legislature, a reaction to the public's growing disenchantment with politics in general.
Indeed, the law capped individual contributions to gubernatorial candidate at $20,000, to other statewide candidates at $5,000 and state legislative hopefuls at $3,000.
To many, its most appealing feature was a virtual ban on candidates transferring campaign money to each other. That was the traditional way legislative leaders got elected to leadership positions and stayed elected -- spreading money around to enough candidates to get the votes they needed.
It was also a convenient way to launder money. A candidate in a tight race could easily promise not to take money from tobacco companies, for instance, when he or she knew a buddy with no such compunctions could take tobacco money with one hand and parcel it out to friends with the other. There was no way to trace which dollar came from where.
What most people didn't notice was that Proposition 34 did not place any limits on contributions to candidates by political parties.
Now what you have is political parties raising money like mad and doling it out to their candidates. By the time it gets into the candidate's war chest, there's no way for the public to tell where it originally came from. But you can bet somebody knows where it came from and where it went to.
In other words it's the same old fund-transferring scheme with another name and even less accountability.
Let's go back to 1990. That's when voters approved Proposition 112. It was also placed on the ballot by lawmakers who wanted to polish their images that had been tarnished by an FBI sting operation targeting corruption in Sacramento.
While most people were relieved to see them trying to do the right thing, they didn't pay much attention to another provision. It called for future legislative salaries to be set by an independent "citizens' commission" to keep them competitive with similar jobs elsewhere.
Until then, lawmakers had to vote each time they wanted a pay raise, which usually filled their inboxes with nasty letters from taxpayers. (E-mail and voice-mail were still things of the future.)
Thus it came as a major shock a few years later when the "citizens' commission," in its first action, quietly raised lawmakers' pay by 37 percent, to $72,000. Since then it has granted additional raises so that most lawmakers now get $110,800 annually; leaders get even more.
Too late, voters realized that Proposition 112 was a pay raise plan disguised as political reform.
At about the same time, Congress eased itself out of the nasty business of voting on each pay raise by turning the process on its head. It passed a bill giving its members a regular cost-of-living increase automatically -- unless they vote not to accept it. The pay raise has usually gone into effect before voters realize there was an option.
That's not to say all political reform is useless. In 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, California voters approved the Political Reform Act to clamp down on the growing influence of lobbyists in the Capitol. It was written by then-Secretary of State Jerry Brown, who used it to help him win the governorship as a reform candidate.
The law placed strict limits on gifts and campaign contributions to public officials by lobbyists and required lobbyists to report their activities and who paid how much for them. It also set up the Fair Political Practices Commission as a political watchdog to enforce those rules as well as laws requiring campaign contributions to be disclosed.
That law brought about as much sunshine into the political arena as all the other political reform measures combined.
But as the other examples show, it's wise to be be skeptical when politicians start talking about political reform.
Now what you have is political parties raising money like mad and doling it out to their candidates. By the time it gets into the candidate's war chest, there's no way for the public to tell where it originally came from. But you can bet somebody knows where it came from and where it went to.
The parties then also have control over the candidates, which stinks, IMO.
Just tell yourself it's just part of doing business in California these days if that is any consolation. ;-)
The initiative path has done many good things for those who sought to vote and have a say (well-informed or manipulated or otherwise) how things were to be run., it has also laid some bigs eggs as well and very rotten ones at that. We are now in the midst of an omelet gone bad, so to speak.
It took a lot of years and a few key initiatives to do it, some well-meaning measures passed that were well-intentioned but also ripe for trouble downstream if not either sun-shined or somewhat easily re-tuneable as needed to keep the roof from falling in.
Such a Deal: Californians Have a History of Buying Ballot Measures that are Deceptively Written and Advertised
by Ted Balaker, Reason Foundation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.