While they provided unhelpful
analysis regarding raising campaign funds, the media series of the New Orleans Times-Picayune and WVUE-TV
highlighted some spending
practices permitted for these funds that are ripe for change. They now add
to that the consequences
of lax regulations regarding elected officials’ family members and their
own abilities to have campaign donations as compensation for activities
performed in the course of campaigning.
R.S.18:1505.2 serves
to define how expenditures are controlled to “immediate family members,” defined
as typically in the larger ethics code as parents, siblings, children, their spouses,
and parents of a spouse. These are prohibited directly, but may be made to
entities where the member has “any” ownership interest. Here, anything goes as
long as what is provided qualifies as a campaign expenditure, it is of fair
value, and the business involved has been registered with the secretary of state
for a year or has the appropriate license from a local government authority.
Note that there are no amount nor
time restrictions on these kinds of payments. This follows candidate
expenditures, where expenditures by incumbents for any practice not otherwise prohibited
can be considered the expenditure of a constant and continuing campaign. Nor is
there any prohibition on a candidate himself being an owner or director or
employee with the possibility of remuneration from the entity that performs these
kinds of services, so long as the expenditures comply with the law.
Thus, it is entirely possible for
a campaign with a large amount of fundraising through creative use of its
spending practices to provide substantial income to a candidate or immediate family
members, directly or indirectly. Not that it’s likely, as even the relaxed
present expenditure rules provides limited opportunities even for a high-volume
campaign to arrange expenditures in this fashion, but scale does not define the
point that campaign funds should not go to supplementing a lifestyle, directly
or indirectly.
The problematic ethics of the
current rules would be diminished certainly if this space’s suggestions that
only bona fide campaign expenditures along the lines of the their federal
office definition that prohibits any “used to fulfill any commitment,
obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the
candidate’s election campaign or individual’s duties as a holder of … office” and
that they may occur only related to a campaign period defined as nine months
prior to an election. But these still could occur in that period for
expenditures connected and only connected to campaigning. So reform must go
further.
And that simply could be this: campaign
work simply cannot be done, unless as a form of in-kind donation subject to
those limitations and reporting, by any private or nonprofit entity where the
candidate or immediate family member has any ownership, directorship or holds
principal office in, or is an employee of it. What’s improper in an amount
large enough to substantially improve a lifestyle still is improper even if it
nets a covered person just one penny.
The only real hardship objection to
this could be that in smaller jurisdictions it might render campaigning difficult.
For example, what if in some one-horse town some guy running for office needs
stakes for yard signs and there only one lumber yard there where the toilet
attendant is his sister’s husband? Perhaps in these circumstances exceptions
could be made for the employee stricture in small jurisdictions (these are made
throughout the election and ethics codes), but it’s worth noting in these days
in times, with cheap transportation, shipping, and Internet options available,
there’s probably little increased cost or inconvenience involved in using
alternatives to entirely local vendors.
One could argue that this is unfair to these family members, who in fact could offer the lowest fair pricing for something. But it’s always in the candidate’s purview not to run for office, and public service always should accentuate the service aspect ahead of any incidental enriching of relatives in the process.
Citizens should not have to
endure the spectacle of candidates using donations through strategic
expenditures as subsidies to them or their families. That this should garner a
sympathetic reception from the citizenry makes it something, in addition to the
other changes of what and when regarding expenditures, that should prompt Gov. Bobby
Jindal and those jockeying to succeed him to get onto this issue and make
it part of a campaign and/or legislative package.
No comments:
Post a Comment