Is New City Council Bill a Local Citizens United?
For anyone interested in campaign finance laws (as all of us should be), it seems that there’s a new piece of proposed legislation making its way through the City Council’s Committee on Governmental Operations. As reported by Beth Morrissey at The New York World, the bill “would allow organizations like companies and unions to advocate for or against a political candidate without disclosing their spending, as long as their communications were targeted at their members.”
The bill is opposed by the Campaign Finance Board and supported by good-government groups like Common Cause/NY, New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), The Brennan Center for Justice, Citizens Union, and Citizen Action of New York:
“We feel that there’s two reasons for disclosure,” testified the Campaign Finance Board’s Amy Loprest. “The first is for the person who receives a communication to know where it came from. The second is for the public to know how much money is spent in support of a candidate.” According to the board, money spent on member-to-member communications should be disclosed to the public.
“It makes us, quite frankly, nervous for a government to be deciding how an organization, whether it’s the National Rifle Association, Planned Parenthood or a union or corporation, would be permitted to communicate with its own members,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause/NY.
Exempted from disclosure, according to the legislation itself, would be expenditures toward “
(5) any communication by a labor or other membership organization aimed at its members, or by a corporation aimed at its stockholders.”
One of the bill’s sponsors is City Councilman Jumaane Williams, who seemed very concerned about the effect of Citizens United on local elections this past summer. According to the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity:
The Citizens United ruling, released in January 2010, tossed out the corporate and union ban on making independent expenditures and financing electioneering communications. It gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools, calling for the election or defeat of individual candidates.
In a nutshell, the high court’s 5-4 decision said that it is OK for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want to convince people to vote for or against a candidate.
This is provided the corporation or union does not coordinate directly with a campaign (something that was apparently allowed in an earlier version of the City Council bill).
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