Campaign Finance Reform: Reclaiming Our Democracy

We need to reign-in special interest money in our state’s politics, increasing the importance of individual contributions and diminishing the importance of PAC contributions. Many people are shocked to learn that four races for the Michigan House of Representatives in 2006 led to spending by the two candidates totaling over $1,200,000 in each contest. That's almost five million dollars spent in just four races! Each election cycle produces new spending records, commonly increasingly 30% from one election cycle to the next.

Clearly, there is too much money chasing political influence in Michigan today. The best information I have found about campaign finance in Michigan is from the Michigan Campaign Finance Network (http://www.mcfn.org).

Some common sense reforms would include:

Reducing the maximum PAC contribution per election cycle to half the current level. Federal campaign finance laws limit PAC contributions to 2.5 times individual contributions, so that while individuals can give up to $2,000 to a Presidential campaign, PACs can give up to $5,000. In Michigan, PACs are allowed to contribute up to TEN TIMES as much as individuals. In races for the Michigan House, for example, individuals can give up to $500 while PACs can give up to $5000. This is a huge difference favoring special interest money.

We can, and should, reduce the PAC advantage here so that it is similar to federal law; if individuals can contribute up to $500 to a House candidate per election cycle, PACs should be allowed to contribute up to $1250 per candidate per election cycle. Similar reductions should take place for all other levels of office.

Additionally, PACs should make monthly disclosures of all contributions and expenditures. The electronic age, and the ability of information to travel at the speed of light, makes antiquated the disclosure of this information only three times a year. Citizens should be able to peruse the Secretary of State’s website after the fifth of each month and see exactly what each PAC raised and spent during the previous month.

We need to add real teeth to the disclosure law to insure that candidates do not avoid disclosing contributions until after the election, then pay a small fine.I propose that, rather than the present $100 per day to a maximum of $1,000, candidates be fined10% of the total of all previously undisclosed contributions per day, with the maximum set at 100% of undisclosed contributions. Fines this stiff will insure the timely disclosure of all contributions.

Individual citizens can, and should, be encouraged to become more involved in funding political campaigns by offering taxpayers the opportunity to deduct up to $200 of their contributions to candidates for state office each year. Current law provides only for deducting $50 per person. The more we can wean candidates from reliance upon PAC funds and rely instead on individual contributors, and the more individual contributors we can involve in our state political process, the healthier our democracy will be.

Economic Development Policy:

Coming Soon....

 

 

Educational Excellence and the Building of Michigan’s Future Prosperity:

As a college professor for over twenty years, offering educational opportunities to our young people is central to me. In the long run, only through quality public schools can Michigan reclaim the prosperity of recent years. We must have a skilled and knowledgeable workforce that attracts 21st century jobs to our state, jobs to replace the 20th century jobs currently being sent abroad.

Attaining high quality public schools is no easy task. It all starts with our families and communities. We must change our state culture to place a higher value on education. Families and communities must work together to instill a belief in the value of a good education on prospects for success in life.

Then there is attaining adequate financial support from taxpayers. We must all recognize that successful public schools benefit the entire society and are worth the costs.

We must hold our schools accountable for their success. A recent report shows that Michigan ranks 49th out of fifty states in the percent of the education tax dollar reaching the classroom. This is an alarming statistic, and should cause us to take a very close look at how our education funding is being used to insure the maximum benefit from our tax dollars.

Finally, we cannot price higher education out of the reach of middle class families. Recent years have seen dramatic reductions in state support for colleges and universities in Michigan, with the schools then turning to students and their parents to recoup the shortfall via higher tuition. With cutbacks in federal student loan programs, we have reached the point at which a higher education is priced out of the reach of many working and middle class families. We need to see that state colleges and universities remain affordable to Michigan families by reversing the trend of reduced state funds for higher education.

Environmental Stewardship: Protecting Our State from those who would Abuse It:

I have visited the fabulous state of Alaska many times, beginning just a few years after the great earthquake of 1964. My wife and I honeymooned in the Alaska wilderness (a story for another occasion), went back again a year later when she was pregnant with our daughter, and in 2004 had the pleasure to take our teenage daughter to Alaska for the first time (more or less).

Alaska is a remarkable land of natural beauty, and to my thinking there is no better place to gain an appreciation of the heavy responsibility mankind has to tread softly on the environment. Alaskan glaciers are numerous and staggering in size, but they are far smaller than when I first went there in 1969. Here is a web site where you can view photos of the same Alaskan glacier from the same perspective taken decades apart (click on "Special Collections", then click "Long Term Change Photograph Pairs" and press the "Submit" button). As you can see, Alaskan glaciers have receded to a remarkable and frightening degree. Overwhelming scientific evidence points to the impact of human activity as the primary culprit. This activity is leading to a warming of the atmosphere and a systematic and severe melting of glaciers and icecaps. Yet many of our current political leaders seem oblivious and indifferent.

People of the First District may not wear their environmentalism on their sleeves, but we recognize that our communities are special partly because of proximity to beautiful Lake St. Clair. A shallow lake that averages only 10 feet in depth, we know how fragile the Lake St. Clair eco-system is. Biological or chemical threats to water quality in the lake, the introduction of foreign species, or accretion of sediment along the shoreline; we must be vigilant to insure the future of this wonderful natural resource.

Our interest in the well-being of Lake St. Clair extends to other aspects of the environment as well. An environmental commitment in Southeast Michigan includes opposition to urban sprawl and support for energy conservation and recycling. It also entails a determination that business and industry reduce pollution and dispose of wastes responsibly. We want to teach our children about environmental stewardship, just as a few years ago an eight-year old girl in my neighborhood lectured me about the importance of turning off the water while brushing my teeth.

Health Care Policy:

Few areas more desperately require reform than our health care policy, but the forces resisting change currently overwhelm advocates of reform. We simply must begin the process of providing health care security to American families and health care cost relief to American employers. And, this is a problem the scale of which requires action by the national government.
Solving the health care crisis in America ties directly into solving the problem of special interest money shaping political outcomes at the state and national levels. The Medicare prescription drug program implemented recently is a textbook example of the public interest (program participants and taxpayers) losing out to special interests. There is simply no other way to account for this costly and cumbersome program that offers modest prescription cost savings to some people.
According to the New York Times, the health care industry is now the top spender on lobbying at the national level. The industry totalled $325 million in lobby expenditures in 2004, led by pharmaceutical companies ($86.9 million), hospital associations ($55 million), and doctors ($35.4 million). I include a link to the Times article here.

There are some things we can do here in Michigan. The state of Maryland recently passed legislation demanding that large businesses in the state spend at least eight percent of their revenue on employee health benefits, and Michigan should do the same. It seems that some large companies attempt to shift the costs of health coverage to taxpayers, Wal-Mart being one commonly cited example. One study found that 4,700 Wal-Mart workers in Wisconsin rely on state-sponsored health insurance in that state. This is unfair to the workers, and it is unfair to the taxpayers of the state. Michigan should closely examine this Maryland law for possible adoption here.

Michigan can also unleash our strong medical researchers so that they can explore all possible venues for conquering a host of medical problems. Specifically, we can repeal current laws restricting embryonic stem cell research that are among the most burdensome in the nation, rivaling only South Dakota's. Here is a link to web site maintained by the National Institutes of Health with a wealth of information on stem cell reearch. Here is a good newspaper article on the human and economic costs of Michigan's antiquated law banning embryonic stem cell research. And here is a link to a recent op-ed piece in the Detroit Free Press on this topic.

The Housing Crisis:

Michigan is one of the nation’s leaders in home foreclosures, and calling this a crisis in our communities is no exaggeration. As evidenced by this article from the New York Times from late 2007, the Grosse Pointes are not immune to this crisis.

The state of Michigan should more actively assist homeowners in finding ways to keep residents in their homes. The state should provide homeowners who fall behind on their loans accessible locations where knowledgeable counselors can offer guidance, and intervene with lenders as advocates. Baltimore, Maryland has had good success with a program of this type. Attorney General Mike Cox attracted over 4,000 people to a one-day foreclosure prevention session at Cobo Hall earlier this year. Clearly, there is great demand for this service. It should not be a one-time offering.

Grim Foreclosure Stats for E. Wayne Cty. (updated 9-1-08)
Community	Number
Grosse Pointes	88
Harper Woods	385
N.E. Detroit  (zip 48224)	2718

 

Reducing foreclosures is a win, win, win, win outcome. Homeowners stay in their homes, lenders avoid assuming possession of property they do not want, housing values in the community are more likely to remain stable, benefiting other homeowners, and local governments and schools, dependent on property taxes for their funding, are more likely to see a continuation of their revenue. And, with many housing economists seeing no end in sight to declining home values, this problem will likely be with us for some time.

Until Lansing starts taking this crisis more seriously, the best available help may be from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved counseling services, listed here for the state of Michigan. Attorney General Cox’s brochure is available here as a pdf file.

Lobbying Reform: Putting Citizens
Before Special Interests:

Recent Washington scandals featuring lobbyist Jack Abramoff have spurred new interest in regulating lobbying activity at the national level and in many states. The U.S. Congress undertook important lobbying reforms in early 2007, and the state of Louisiana, long regarded as one of the most politically backward in the nation, passed tough new reform legislation in early 2008. Michigan’s lobbying regulations, among the weakest in the country, need overhaul as well.

According to an article by Eric Kelderman published in Stateline.org, over 38,000 lobbyists are registered at state capitols, roughly five lobbyists for every legislator. The total lobby expenditure for all fifty states is about $1 billion. The Center for Public Integrity estimates Michigan to rank ninth among states in lobby expenditure, with spending of about $27.2 million in 2004.

Currently, Michigan is one of three states that fails to require elected public officials to disclose personal finances so that voters can judge possible conflicts of interest, but this should be done.

Michigan does not demand that former office-holders wait for two years before lobbying their former colleagues, as is the case with Congress and in many states, but this should be done.

Michigan does not require that elected officials disclose meals, gifts, or trips purchased by lobbyists, but this should be done.

Michigan does not require that lobbyists disclose trips for elected officials, unless the trip cost more than $675, but all lobbyist-paid travel should be subject to disclosure.

Citizens versus special-interest lobbyists: a never-ending battle to maintain control of money seeking to determine political outcomes. As evidenced by the outrageous example of recent Medicare prescription drug legislation in Congress, today it is a battle that the money of lobbyists is winning decisively. We must begin the long and difficult process of putting citizen influence first in Washington and Lansing.

 

Toxic Politic$:
Tragic Consequences to Pay-to-Play Politics in Wayne County, Michigan

Pay-to-play politics in Lansing leads to environmental damage, anxiety for neighboring property owners, loss of millions in pension funds, and incalculable clean-up costs.

This is an episode that is almost too appalling to believe. It is the story of the pay-to-play culture of Lansing, politicians who are either clueless or depraved, potential environmental damage endangering countless lives, the loss of millions of dollars by a local public employee pension fund, and the likely costs to taxpayers of toxic clean-up. Curiously, it is a story that has received almost no media attention, yet it provides a glaring example of the tragic consequences of pay-to-play politics today in Michigan.

It is the story of a businessman who wanted to place a Class 1 toxic waste disposal site in Wayne County, the most populous county in Michigan. The hazardous toxic sludge, everything short of radioactive wastes, would be pumped deep into the ground and presumably safely contained for thousands of years. This “deep injection well” would be located within 10 miles of the Detroit River that feeds the lower Great Lakes.

Local residents and environmentalists desperately fight the project, pointing to concerns about the geologic stability of below-ground storage and the questionable need for such a disposal site. There are about 50 Class 1 commercial toxic disposal sites in the United States, mostly located in Texas and Louisiana. Arguments are made that the nearest site, located in Ohio, was operating far below capacity.

To facilitate the approval and operation of the toxic dump site, the businessman forms a Political Action Committee (PAC) in Lansing, and recognizing that politicians may resist taking money from the “Toxic Dump PAC”, he creatively labels his PAC “Citizens for Clean Water.” Of course, the businessman himself is the only citizen-contributor, and “clean water” is hardly his agenda, so the name could not be more deceptive.

To further obscure the connection between the toxic disposal company and the Clean Water PAC, in a routine Michigan Campaign Finance Report filing on October 25, 2005, the businessman lists his employment not as the toxic waste company executive, but as the President of a legislator’s PAC, the Ed Gaffney Leadership Fund. However, when on September 21, 2006, Mr. Gaffney’s Democratic opponent ran this newspaper ad sharply critical of his unsavory relationship to the toxic dump, the businessman filed a “corrected” finance statement listing his toxic waste company employment the very next day (obviously, we struck a nerve). Aside from receiving a contribution for $1,000 from the “Citizens for Clean Water PAC”, Representative Gaffney’s involvement in this affair is unclear.

Alas, the story does not end there. After operating for only 10 months, in late October of 2006, too late to arise as an issue in the 2006 election, routine inspection by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality finds toxic chemicals leaking from a pipeline at the site, and orders the site closed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) undertakes a thorough review of the toxic dump, finding numerous violations, including that tests to insure that toxic chemicals were not entering the ground water had not been conducted. The EPA fines and withdraws the company’s permit to operate (and this is the Bush administration EPA!). The businessman who ran the company transfers ownership, dissolves the “Citizens for Clean Water PAC”, and apparently leaves the state.

The toxic dump, located just south of I-94 near Detroit Metropolitan Airport (see satellite image), now sits in limbo. No estimate has been made of the cost of cleaning the site, but it will likely be far more than the $27,000 bond posted by the company, with taxpayers paying much of the bill. The major investor in the toxic disposal company was the Detroit Police and Fire Pension Fund, whose only hope for recouping its 30 million dollar investment involves having a new company permitted to resume operating the site. Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, arguing against renewing the permit, cited the company’s “…egregious and flagrant violation of the law, underscoring their complete disregard for public health and environmental safety.”

In justifying the permit withdrawal, which some contend is excessively harsh, the EPA explained that the “level of irresponsible behavior exhibited by the permittee….” was unique among all regulatory cases of this type with which the Agency has ever dealt.

So, the next time a politician tells you: “Don’t worry, I take lobbyist’s money only from ‘good’ people,” ask them if they mean groups like the “Citizens for Clean Water”. (Oh yes, and do worry!)

The most thorough account of the battle over this toxic disposal site, although somewhat dated now, was in the Metro Times in 2002, a link to which is provided here.

 

A Special Commentary on "Wedge" Issues:

Coming soon.