Governor wants enhanced ethics law after Supreme Court overturn
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Imploring state lawmakers not to treat the recent overturn of a Missouri political ethics law as “open season” for rampant fundraising, Gov. Jay Nixon called on the General assembly to enact new, stronger legislation.
In addition to reinstating bans on committee-to-committee fundraising transfers, Nixon, at a press conference, asked lawmakers to once again restore fundraising caps on state political candidates.
“This world in which unlimited checks can be written to candidates, is a world that leads to deepening public cynicism about the necessary and, quite frankly, proud aspects of democracy,” Nixon told reporters in his office on Friday.
Earlier this week the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously decided to overturn Senate Bill 844, passed in 2010, for procedural reasons. The court determined that the political ethics provisions were unconstitutionally rolled into an unrelated piece of legislation to help insure its passage.
SB 844, which passed by near unanimous margins in both the House and Senate, made it illegal to launder political donations by passing them in between political fundraising committees. The same bill also imposed civil criminal penalties on those found in obstruction of the Missouri Ethics Commission. It also forced state lawmakers to report within 48 hours any contribution greater than $500 received during a legislative session.
Attempting to turn the court’s decision into a positive for Missouri voters, Nixon not only called for the provisions of SB 844 to be reinstated, but he asked lawmakers to include even more ethics rules.
Nixon said he wanted the General Assembly to approve fundraising caps for political candidates. Missouri voters enacted campaign contribution limits in 1994, but they were overturned in an earlier court case. The governor also asked that lawmakers bar themselves from acting as “political consultants” to other elected officials in order to gain an additional revenue stream.
“People will search for excuses not to reinstate this law,” Nixon said. “Those excuses should be few and far between. This week has caused a lessening of the protection and openness in the political system of the state of Missouri that was agreed to overwhelmingly by the legislature.”
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Posted by Tim Sampson on February 17, 2012. Filed under Featured, Subscribers.
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