Newspapers push for more campaign finance disclosure

Today the Grand Rapids Press joined the Detroit News in calling for more financial disclosure from groups that sponsor television issue ads.

“Michigan’s current campaign finance laws are woefully inadequate in an age of unlimited corporate and union spending,“ the GR Press writes. “What’s needed is more disclosure, so citizens know exactly who is paying for advertisements that have already begun to flood their homes.”

Already this election season a group called Americans for Job Security has spent $227,790 on ads criticizing gubernatorial candidate Pete Hoekstra. Several stations ultimately pulled the ads because of factual inaccuracy. Americans for Job Security refuses to say who put up the money for the ads, and Michigan law does not require such disclosure.

In a recent opinion Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land declined to require disclosure of financing for television “issue ads” — campaign ads that avoid directly telling people how to vote. Land said that it is up to the Legislature to change state campaign law.

The GR Press urges legislators to enact reforms.

What’s needed is something like proposed federal legislation that would impose disclosure requirements on unions and corporations. Forget the fine distinctions between express advocacy and issue advocacy. All groups that do political advertising should be required to tell us the sources of their money.

One June 1 the Detroit News editorial board wrote:

… Land’s determination says nothing about the wild-west atmosphere in which shadowy groups are free to raise and spend as much as they want without any transparency, as long as they don’t specifically urge voting for or against a candidate. Lawmakers shouldn’t allow another election cycle to go by without fixing this glaring deficiency.

So far no legislator has stepped forward with a plan to do this.