If you completely understand the controversy over a proposal to "clarify" a state law on campaign contributions from corporation, you have been paying more attention than most.

Lawmakers went for the clarification after the Campaign Spending Commission issued a ruling on a previous law (a ruling still under appeal in the courts) that severely limited what corporations could give or spend.  But the effort was dropped after some campaign spending reform advocates said they smelled a rat.

The simple solution would be to follow the lead of the federal government and simply outlaw direct contributions from corporations or unions, both of which remain legal under Hawaii law.

The problem with that approach, as the federal situation shows us, is that when direct contributions are banned or Political Action Committee contributions are limited, the union and corporate money simply finds its way into other "independent" groups that do "issue" advertising that clearly favors one candidate or hurts another.

Once again, this demonstrates that writing good campaign spending legislation is the toughest thing lawmakers can do, because they are unusually able to see where the loopholes might emerge.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.