Interest Groups – Question 5 (really an update)

Everyone make sure you read this!! This is not really a question but rather a comment and update. The section on regulation and reform needs some updating. Scandal and crises do drive reform as noted in the beginning of that section in the story of “Operation Lost Trust,” the FBI scam operation that caught a significant number of legislators accepting illegal money from lobbyists tied to a promise to pass legislation. Since the chapter was written, the rules have been tightened up a bit on reporting contributions (in 2003). Independent groups that spend money trying to influence elections must report spending (this reform was pushed by Governor Sanford in response to the money spend by gambling interests to help Governor Hodges). More recently the courts have ruled that a group pushing for public funding of private schools had to report what it spent and where it got the money, but that ruling came well after they had spent a lot of money in the 2006 election. Presently the effort to reform and strengthen laws seems to be going backwards. This year the legislature has considered several bills that would weaken laws and protect legislators more than improve ethics, for example threatening anyone with a jail sentence who reveals that they have filed an ethics complaint against a legislator with the House or Senate Ethics Committees. A second example. The 2003 campaign donation law tried to improve reporting by making candidates report the occupations of those who donate, but it was worded to say that candidates had to collect such information, but failed to say they had to actually report it. The fix proposed by the legislature is to remove any requirement rather than require reporting, as the 2003 law intended. These non-reforms may well be beaten back, but further real reforms (such as outlawing leadership political action committees in which important legislators collect money from interest groups that they then give to other legislators to curry favor and keep power) are unlikely short of another crisis simply because people are not angry enough.