Senator blocking online disclosure

Op-Ed by Ellen Miller

Publication: The Lexington Herald-Leader

Ellen Miller
October 31, 2007

Along with every other House and Senate candidate for office in 2008, Sen. Mitch McConnell's quarterly campaign finance records were due Oct. 15. He has reported that he raised about $1.5 million since July 1, but not a single person in Kentucky will be able to review those records online for months.

That's because under current Senate rules, senators print out reports of their recent contributors and hand them over to the Secretary of the Senate. Another agency, the Federal Election Commission, will spend a quarter of a million dollars in taxpayers' money to enter the information into a new database. This is hardly 21st century style disclosure.

While current reports filed on paper will be available before voters cast ballots in the 2008 elections, the same cannot be said for campaign finance reports filed next fall. When the money is flying in fast and furious before the 2008 election, voters will not have the ability to see for themselves the donors who are contributing money to pay for the ads and the mailers that are inundating them.

A cost-saving solution is for Senate candidates to file reports electronically. Members of the House of Representatives do it, and so do all of the presidential candidates. A popular bill with bipartisan support to require electronic filing is pending in the Senate, called the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act.

Yet this Senate bill has been held up for six months - and counting - by a senator whose identity was kept a secret by McConnell. And now, acting as McConnell's henchman, Sen. John Ensign recently stalled the bill by insisting that the Senate vote to attach an irrelevant and controversial amendment. Interestingly, Ensign heads the chief money-raising committee in the U.S. Senate - the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Internal Senate documents labeled that measure as a "McConnell amendment," showing that it did not originate from Ensign's office, but from McConnell's. McConnell and Ensign clearly want to kill the bill that would mandate electronic filing.

We all know all too well that campaign contributors are often tied very neatly into who gets earmarks, tax breaks and favorable legislation. The more hidden the information, the more nefarious the potential links between the two.

Sens. McConnell and Ensign's efforts to block electronic filing means that businesses, lobbyists and individuals seeking special favors can be assured that no one will question their contributions until after the damage is done. Unless McConnell and Ensign end their blockade of this bill, the public will be kept in the dark as to who's funding whom and what they get in return.

The only way to stop groups from polluting the process of making decisions on behalf of their contributors - absent systemic campaign finance reform - is to make the process transparent for all to see.

That means required electronic reporting in downloadable, database formats. If McConnell has nothing to hide, what's wrong with that?