Why does Virginia need campaign finance reform?
Del. Marcus Simon (D-Falls Church), Chairman of the House Privileges and Elections Committee, and Shruti Shah with the Coalition for Integrity brief the Transition Team on the need for campaign finance reform in Virginia. We discuss a history of perceived corruption in the legislature and the fact that any person or corporation can contribute an unlimited amount of money. Finally, we preview the campaign finance reform study that passed in the General Assembly this year.
Michael Pope
Welcome to Transition Virginia, the podcast that examines the ongoing transition of power in Virginia. I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
And I'm Thomas Bowman. Today on the podcast, campaign finance reform. Virginia has almost no guardrails when it comes to campaign finance, as long as all the money is disclosed. But is that enough? Does Virginia need more rules to guard against corruption?
Michael Pope
So this has been a topic of discussion for many years in Virginia. And when Democrats took control the General Assembly last year, lots of people hoped they might take action. But now the Democrats have concluded their second session in power and headed into campaign season, they fail to enact any new rules.
Thomas Bowman
In the time honored tradition of Virginia politics, they did create a Study Committee. So after the election, we'll have some recommendations for the next General Assembly. So we're going to get into what didn't happen this year. And we're going to preview what might end up in that study later.
Michael Pope
And we've got a great panel to dig into this issue. Joining us is the President and CEO of the Coalition For Integrity, Shruti Shah, thanks for joining us.
Shruti Shah
Great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Thomas Bowman
Also, joining us is a lone voice in the wilderness who's been calling for campaign finance reform for years. He's the Chairman of the Influential House Privileges and Elections Committee and he's returning to Transition Virginia for a third time. Delegate Marcus Simon, thank you for joining us.
Marcus Simon
Thank you, Thomas, and Michael, for having me back. I can only hope to be as entertaining as some of your repeat guests like Sarah Graham Taylor and Trevor Southerland, two of my favorites when I- because I am also a regular listener of the podcast.
Michael Pope
Clearly clearly.
Marcus Simon
Hope to be nearly as entertaining as they are. They are two my favorites.
Thomas Bowman
You know, if we had Trevor on today, this would probably be a very different episode from what we're about to record.
Michael Pope
Undoubtedly, so. Undoubtedly so. So Shruti Shah, I want to start with you, because you have your organization, the Coalition for Integrity, does this thing called the "swamp index," which always rates Virginia very poorly. Explain to us what the swamp index is, and why does Virginia always rank so low?
Shruti Shah
So, you're absolutely right. Virginia ranks very poorly. And it is really unfortunate, because I'm a Virginia resident and voter and I'm very, very disappointed with Virginia's ranking, personally. So the swamp index is the states with anti corruption measures for public officials. And it's an index that ranks states and D.C. on the laws and regulations on ethics and transparency issues in the Executive and Legislative branch. It looks at things like whether the state has an independent ethics agency, whether the ethics agency has the power to initiate and conduct investigations, whether they have the power to hold public hearings, and do they have subpoena power, do they have any sanctioning or enforcement power, can they accept anonymous complaints? And also other things like, which are related to transparency and, you know, gift rules and conflicts of interest rules? Now, Virginia ranks very poorly, because while Virginia has three ethics agencies, one for the Executive branch and you know, one for the House and one for the Senate, they really are what the name suggests, and why is only they have really no enforcement power, so no investigative or sanctioning power and their members are not protected from removal without cause. I mean, that's the primary reason why Virginia ranks so poorly.
Michael Pope
So before we get into Marcus Simon's bill here on outlawing the use of campaign contributions for personal expenses, I'm wondering one follow up question on the swamp index, what state or states do well on the swamp index? So, Virginia is always on the on the losing end of that equation, which states should Virginia look to as being modeled states?
Shruti Shah
I mean, really, there are states like Washington, Rhode Island, California, all of these states do significantly better. I mean, there is no state that scores over 80. So keep that in mind. And most states actually score below 60. So that's a failing grade. However, I mean, there are states which you can look to in terms of really the independence and the investigative and sanctioning power of the ethics agency, their conflict of interest rules for legislators and really their gift rules for inspiration. And I would say Washington, California, Rhode Island would be those states.
Michael Pope
Well, let's talk about pizza. So when Marcus Simon introduced his bill to outlaw campaign funds for personal use, there was a lot of talk about pizza. It began when Senator Lionell Spruill posed this hypothetical scenario.
Lionell Spruill
We do a whole lot on knocking on doors, let's say you want to campaign the time, and I have 15 people to do, we'd knock on doors, and we said, we're gonna break at two o'clock. And I stopped by Pizza Hut, and get 12 pieces, and get it to give to them. If I eat a slice, am I in trouble?
Michael Pope
So Senator Ryan McDougle applied the irrespective test to that scenario.
Ryan McDougle
People have to eat irrespective of them seeking office. So if Senator Spruill had a piece of pizza from that pizza party, under this language, it says in whole or in part, and so whether he had one piece of that pizza or the whole pizza, I think he would be in violation of the language as it is written.
Michael Pope
Delegate Simon, is this a pizza with an extra topping of corruption?
Marcus Simon
So you know, this happens every time this bill comes up, people look for the- to try and find an absurd item to try and pick apart the bill. And, and, you know, they argue that of course, everybody supports the idea and don't think we should be doing this. But they look for some sort of absurd example to talk about as an unintended consequence. And so it's not that we don't want to stop your bills, it's not that we think you have the wrong idea, it's just that we're worried about these unintended consequences. And so yeah, I wish I thought of this response at the time. I mean, it certainly one easy way around that. I'm looking right now at Pizza Hut in Chesapeake, Virginia, and they've got a $10 tastemaker pizza. So I mean, one easy solution would have been, of course, if you want to put $1.50 into the pot, you know, just like the dollar 50 that you could have paid for a slice of pizza. I know that a lot of candidates are resistant to that. But that was sort of answered and Senator McDougle's question, but but I think, you know, the I think Senator McDougle frankly misapplied the the irrespective test. He would not have been ordering pizza and having a pizza party, irrespective of whether he was running for office or not. So yeah, I think it's arguable. But I think worst case scenario there is you you put in $1.50 of your own money. And we had a case like I have an example a few years ago, where I introduced this bill in the House, which I think goes to a little bit of a disconnect between with some of the candidates think I think, what some of our constituents think we ought to be doing. But former Delegate John O'Bannon said, "Well, what if I'm out knocking on doors, and I spill coffee on my shirt? Why can't the campaign go out and buy me a new shirt?" And my answer is, why should the campaign buy you a new shirt? Right? I mean, yeah, that that kind of thing happens when we're at work. If I if I spill coffee on my shirt at my office, my employer doesn't reimburse me and buy me a new shirt. Right? So I think frankly, some of these are disingenuous arguments. I think people are looking to pick apart the bill itself. But I also think that there needs to be a little bit of a mindset, there's a certain amount of entitlement I guess, that folks have.
Shruti Shah
So I do agree with Delegate Simon, that it's really disingenuous, because, you know, even if you look at the FEC website, the Federal Election Commission, it does provide pretty detailed guidance on what personal uses and what personal use isn't. For example, you can actually pay for food during fundraising activities and campaign meetings. So I think a pizza would be fine. And that's certainly not what voters are concerned about. Well, what they are really concerned about is you don't use your campaign funds to pay for expensive meals at expensive restaurants or use it to pay your son's tuition, or to really pay for private club membership. I mean, those are the things we're really concerned about. We're not concerned about trivial expenses, such as, you know, a $10 pizza.
Michael Pope
You know, this is perhaps a minor point here. But the Senator has many great pizza places in his district that are not Pizza Hut. So it's possible, he could have chosen a local business to give that example, just a thought for future scenario building in the General Assembly.
Marcus Simon
I always try and keep my examples local, if I'm going to do anything on the record, right, you might plug a local business while you're at it.
Thomas Bowman
If you get pizza on your shirt as a candidate, regardless of whether or not you're eating it, can you then take your campaign funds and spend it on dry cleaning like a certain Republican statewide candidate used to do?
Marcus Simon
Well, yeah, right now you can spend it on anything. You know, one of the other interesting things about this bill, and this is why, I you know, I think, again, our constituents versus us, and people in the public are just on a different place than this. But one of the other things that bill did was it said that you can explicitly carve out an exception for childcare expenses. And the way that came to be was last year, when we had a female candidate for Congress who applied to the FEC for some guidance, the Federal Election Commission. And said they wanted some guidance on whether they could use their campaign funds to pay for childcare expenses, so they could have someone look after their children while they were out on the campaign trail. And the FEC allowed that. And so we had a bunch of delegates introduce bills to try and codify that here in Virginia, and said, "Hey, we want a bill that says you can use your campaign funds for childcare expenses." And so the the attorneys that LIS that draft these bills was very beautifully drafted them bills that said, "It is illegal to use campaign funds for personal use, except for childcare expenses." And the folks that asked for these bills got this, like, "What is- why is my bill so long?" And the answer was because, well, before we can give you a bill to authorize childcare expenses out of campaign funds, we have to outlaw personal use of campaign funds generally, because right now, there's no reason you can't use them for for childcare, or for dry cleaning, and to your example Thomas, or for your kids tuition, or for your vacation, or to go to a fact finding mission, or anything like that. So again, it's just sort of interesting that to even get to a place where we could do a childcare exemption, we first have to ban the personal use. So it's wide open in Virginia, you can raise as much as you want from whoever you want, and spend it on anything you'd like.
Shruti Shah
So you can use your campaign funds for as a personal piggy bank is what you're saying?
Marcus Simon
Right now, and this is the example I use on the campaign trail, there is no practical difference. And Senator Morrison had to add a tax bill that says there's no practical difference between putting $1,000 in your campaign account, versus your personal checking account as far as what you can do with it except for the requirement to report it. So I get there is that is the difference. And that's, I guess that any activity that happens in your campaign account, at least you are going to have to show, to some degree, what you spent it on although that's another area, I think that the jury would probably agree we could use some improvement on the counter argument to any of these proposals to limit contribution sizes or sources, or what you can spend it on as well. It's all transparent, and people can go look it up and they can decide what to do with it, except that the detail that you expect wouldn't be there. Right? So we wouldn't know that Senator Spruill spent $100 on pizza to eat himself, all it would say is $100 to pizza. $10 for 10 pizzas. And that's all we would see is that there's so that's the other part of that example, it's get gets difficult. How do we know if he ate it or not? He didn't differentiate, there's not a whole lot of detail. We have folks that will put $400 to Amazon. Right? And they won't even necessarily say it's for office supplies, or it's for just Amazon and eBay or say things like reimbursement. So that's another sort of hole that needs to be plugged I think at some point.
Shruti Shah
Yeah, the font that the state requires for campaign expenditures does not demand a lot of details at all.
Thomas Bowman
You know, a lot of the problems you're bringing up, Delegate Simon, seems like if you were to put campaign contributions on a blockchain as a public ledger, where you can see what that token later got spent on, that would save all of your reporting requirements, that would save all of the backend work that you have to do, it seems to me like that's the way to go, frankly, on this if you want to maintain a system similar to what Virginia has, with a little bit more trust and control. But one of the arguments you're getting against, Delegate Simon, your new law, limiting the use of campaign cash, is that it could be weaponized. Here's what Senator Joe Vogel said, talking about her concern that the new law might overwhelm the system with complaints.
Joe Vogel
The critical component here is to actually get it right and not create an environment where we overwhelm the Department of Elections and in fact, the board with a an environment that crushes them with litigious and frivolous complaints that they cannot process.
Thomas Bowman
You know, usually when a Republican brings up a complaint like this, it's, it's often because it's something that they've already worked on and they're going to they're planning on doing themselves. So is this a legitimate concern that a new law could be weaponized to use complaints to harm candidates by launching frivolous investigations?
Marcus Simon
So you there are a couple ways to deal with. I mean, certainly, like you said, it's not like this just a thought just occurred to her. And there have been dirty tricks. They've been played in campaigns forever. But you might sort of answered all these sorts of things, is that, you know, 47 other states in the federal government have figured out how to make it work, and they don't run into these problems. So is it is it a theoretical possibility? It certainly is. And there's, but there are easy ways to deal with that. I mean, you can certainly have some sort of disincentive for filing frivolous complaints, you could have a penalty. You could have people when they're making the complaints, do it in a sworn affidavit format, so that they they're guilty, potentially, of perjury, or other penalties if they if they're swearing out false statements, you know, when they when they make the complaint. So, you know, the Virginia State Bar, we have this issue as well. I mean, people get upset with lawyers all the time, business competitors can try and flood the system. And so there there are ways to sort of sort through those things that are completely unfounded and meritless. And only let the things that have some merit, move their way through. And there's, you know, right now, we still have, you know, we have potentially, the potential to make these accusations about misuse of funds. Currently, yeah. And people do go to the press. I'm sort of surprised that string of disconnects, I surprised how little mileage that usually seems to get with the public. I think they may assume that we're all corrupt anyway. So that's the other thing, I don't know that you get to get a whole lot of bang, politically, for that buck if you were to try it.
Shruti Shah
I think one way to tackle frivolous complaints is by issuing guidance, which is really what Marcus Simon's bill suggested that the State Attorney General's office or I don't know whether it was the Board of Elections would issue guidance. There is already a lot of guidance out there, as I'd mentioned before by the Federal Election Commission, which would also guard against all of these frivolous complaints where people kind of understand in a scenario based situation what is acceptable and what is not.
Thomas Bowman
Okay, thank you. We are going to take a quick break. We're here with Shruti Shah of the Coalition For Integrity and Delegate Marcus Simon from Falls Church.
Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia. We're talking about campaign finance reform. Now one issue that animates a lot of people is money from Dominion Energy. Now every year, there are proposals to outlaw money from Dominion. Chap Peterson has a bill every year to do that, it always fails. This year, there was a bill on the House side from Delegate Ibraheem Samirah. It failed. Now here's McGuire Woods lobbyist, Chris Nolan, responding to that House bill that would have outlawed campaign cash from Dominion.
Chris Nolan
It singles out one type of corporation to ban a form of political speech. And all the while, we've heard testimony about the ability to regulate profits. Well, there all manner of interests that come before this General Assembly on tax policy, environmental policy, franchise laws that all had issues before you and they are not included in this. And what we ask is that you have a level playing field with regard to political speech.
Michael Pope
Now Marcus Simon, does he have a point? Is singling out Dominion problematic?
Marcus Simon
I mean, the answer is yes. You know, because I think his point is well taken. I mean, you know, we have a franchise system he was referring to you know, in Virginia, you can't have Budweiser can't set up a Budweiser outlet store in Virginia and sell beer directly from the factory or frankly, a microbrewery, right? You can't do that. And we that's because we have what's called a three tier system. And if you look at one of the biggest contributors, you know, it's the Virginia Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association and they're protecting a particular business model that they have an interest in. So I mean, that's just one example. There are there are lots and lots of folks that have very similar interests. So if you're going to allow corporate contributions or business contributions, you're going to get a lot of folks that that have an interest in, you know, the outcome of state legislation, they're going to want to have an opportunity to, to speak, and, and show their support for their friends and allies in the General Assembly. So, you know, Dominion has been attracted attention, just because in years past, particularly, just the sheer volume and the size of their contributions, and the dollars that are at stake, you know, and and so, you know, I think they've drawn a little more scrutiny than some of the other types of businesses that have a lot of state regulation, and where General Assembly activity can affect their business model. And then I think the other thing that causes me to be sort of singled out as the nexus between corporate interest and the environment. And I think that the environmental activists that are that have been unhappy in the years past, with Dominion's investments in fossil fuel projects, and things, have brought a sort of a different level of vigor, I guess, to this, this anti-corporate campaign. I don't know that they came to it, frankly, initially out of a concern for ethics, as much as a concern for the environment that kind of animated the conversation about Dominion, but I think Dominion's got a couple of strikes against them, which makes them an attractive target for that kind of critique.
Thomas Bowman
You know, you mentioned Dominion and getting critiqued because they own VEPCO, the power generation, the legacy power generation entity in Virginia, and supplies some to North Carolina, too, but they aren't the only large company that's drawn the ire of the little guy over the years in Virginia history. Right? You've got Dominion today, in the past, it was Norfolk Southern, it's been the tobacco companies, it seems, it seems to me like a strategy, like the one just beating down one specific company is akin to playing whack-a-mole. Right? And so another bill that was considered and killed this year, was a ban on corporate donations. Delegate Lee Carter had a bill that went nowhere that would have banned all money from corporations, which is similar to laws found in Alaska, Texas, and Arkansas. During the discussion on this, Delegate Mark Sickles said the following.
Mark Sickles
People may think Virginia is bad, but we don't have dark money here. Everything is wide quite opened down to $100. The federal government doesn't require until $200 to report and, and I can promise you that Alaska, Texas, and Arkansas may have a corporate ban on money, but that they have dark money. That's where the dark money is there there plenty of money being raised in politics, and special interest money in those three states.
Thomas Bowman
Okay, so is banning money from corporations even possible? How would it work? And have we seen success stories from other states?
Marcus Simon
So, you know, is there's the analogy, right, that everybody uses with this, and I think it's a little bit of a cliche, but it's, it's very apt is, is water finding its way, right, I mean, you can put a dam here and the water is going to go around, and it becomes really difficult, even hold it back to a certain point, but it's gonna find its way down, gravity is going to pull the water wherever it needs to go. And I think that's probably true of the money as well, you can put up a barrier here, but the money is going to go somewhere else. I think the point that Delegate Sickles was making, was at least this way, you know, everybody sees and can be held accountable for the contributions they take and for whom they take from whom they take them. If you banned corporations from from creating it, you'd have super PACs or just PACs. You have in some places, you know, some industries, they've already just sort of set it up that way anyway. So you get a, you know, the automated route of the the Autonomous Vehicle Association, right, they give us money, and that's funded by, you know, companies who want to make drones, right, or one of the self driving cars. And so they band together, they form an association, they form a political action committee, and that's where the money comes from. And then it's sometimes hard to tell who's contributing to those PACs. So there is I think Delegate Sickles has a point that that money comes in, I think there's an argument to be made, that doing it that way, isn't better, unless, I mean, you have some maybe, yeah, unless you can also further regulate the PACs and require them to, you know, be transparent, and file, you know, more detailed returns where they get their money and how they spend it. But I think that's what he was talking about. And I think there is, again, I don't know that you've had anybody successfully get that kind of money out of politics, ultimately, and I know we can get to this maybe later in the show. What is this? Is there a solution for this and I think that you know, one of the things we're seeing with with HR one at the federal level, and discussion we really need to have is is do we want to create a public financing kind of an alternative for people that want to say, "Hey, look, I don't want corporate money. I don't want PAC money. I don't want anybody special interest money." Do we create an opportunity for folks to tap into a federal system that's funded by taxpayers? And do taxpayers have an interest in people running clean campaigns?
Michael Pope
I have a question about dark money. So I used to follow the money with my local city council. And there were, you know, of course, be all kinds of special interests that would donate money to the campaign of a city council person. And that was all, you know, public record, and you could sort of follow who was giving the money, and who was receiving it, and generally how they were using it. But then there was this other aspect of it, that was much more difficult to follow, where an interest, a special interest, might donate money to a favored nonprofit, and the city council member was on the board of the nonprofit, but it was not technically campaign spending. So I mean, that's probably not the same thing as dark money. But I mean, isn't a lot of how this money flows around the system, difficult to track? And on that topic, what the heck is dark money? And is it true that we don't have it in Virginia?
Marcus Simon
So I'll start I guess, with tackling that, I mean, dark money, right, is is I think the definition is a little bit in the, in the mouth of the person saying it. It's in the eye of the beholder, right, I think we can use it to describe a lot of different things. And, you know, certainly there are different ways to try and use money to exert a positive influence on somebody that you're trying to curry favor with. And that we have had some examples of that, in Virginia, although people deny that that was the motivation behind it there, it happens to be the some of the big entities that contribute a lot, you know, to campaigns also have charitable arms. And, you know, sometimes, you know, arguably, it's just a coincidence that they wind up donating to somebody's favorite charity, or there's a small circle. And so it's just bound to happen. We do also have some cases, particularly with things that people don't want to get their...have to be accountable for, when you want to go negative, where people don't want to run super negative issue ads and things like that. We have had some cases of some fairly hard to track down entity through what are called independent expenditures, or not even independent expenses or just issue advocacy. But the issue is really specific to a particular politician or particular office holder. And I know we've seen things like that go on in Virginia, again, so even to avoid the transparencies that we do require or try to require there, there are reasons that people in the past have tried to go dark, or do that as discreetly as they can.
Michael Pope
Shruti, is it true, I mean, Delegate Sickles was making the case there that we don't have dark money in Virginia. Is that true?
Shruti Shah
Michael, no, that's absolutely not true. And this was a question we considered in the swamp index itself, as well. So I'll try to explain this question in two parts. One of the questions we asked in the swamp index is does the State require reporting of contributors to independent spenders? In Virginia, no, Virginia does not even require reporting of contributors to independent spenders, that's what I would call the first level of dark money. In terms of the next two levels, does the State require reporting of the ultimate or beneficial owners of LLCs that contribute to groups that make independent expenditures? So Virginia obviously does not require that second level of disclosure. And Virginia also does not require reporting of funders to 501 C groups that contribute to independent spenders. So say, for example, if Virginia DOD did require, say, contributors to independent spenders, which it does not, it definitely does not require reporting of actually, people who fund those 501 C three groups that ultimately contribute to independent spenders. So I would say in Virginia, we don't even have first level disclosure, forget the second level disclosure of dark money.
Michael Pope
So what you're saying is, maybe it's not dark money, maybe it's dark, dark money, because there's no sunlight on the dark money, you can't even see it.
Shruti Shah
That's absolutely true.
Thomas Bowman
Alright, so one issue is money coming from corporations and Delegate Simon, you mentioned that there was a perception that the Legislature is corrupt or that politicians are corrupt, and all somebody has to do that wants to influence them, is to contribute enough money to get what they want. So, somebody, if we're not talking about Dominion right now, what or railroads or anything like that, you might point to casinos and gambling in recent years, but this is also a strategy that can be replicated by individuals as well. Right? So if you were to ban a corporation or or all corporations from contributing, there is nothing stopping the CEO from just dumping millions of dollars if they had the money and wanted to contribute it. So what are we doing about individual contributors who are also intending to supplant the influence of corporations in Virginia?
Marcus Simon
Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. And you know at the federal level, you have a 2600 or up to $2900 limit, and couples can combine theirs, you can get up to I think, like $5400 now, or $5800, whatever that math is. But the Virginia we tried- the the Governor, Governor Northam, you know, at one point proposed a $10,000 per individual, you know individual contribution limit, and we haven't gotten anywhere with that. And it's the it's funny, you know, it's having the, this is the transition of power. Right? Now remember, you know, a lot of us took a lot of glee in pounding the Republicans over these issues, when we were in the minority, and talked about how this was their their strategy to maintain power with these unlimited contribution amounts, and so on and so forth. And now that we're in power, you know, I know that I chair Privileges and Elections I can get some some things out of the House but we run into the problem in the Senate. It does seem to be that the party in power, seems to lose interest in putting these limits on, once we take over. But yeah, I mean, that we can't even get, like I said something as I think pretty reasonable as a $10,000 personal limit, you know, out. And so there's, that's problematic. I don't think that folks ought to be able to spend 50 or $100,000, to buy themselves a legislative seat. Maybe the other part of it is that, you know, and I think there was a there's an article about this not long ago, as far as investments go, you know, buying the Legislature is relatively cheap. You know, you can, if you look at the number of competitive seats, and where the, the the vulnerable people are, you can, you know, sort of strategically direct, you know, probably around a million, 2, $3 million, and, and probably set yourself up pretty nicely with fully bought and paid for legislators. So I mean, that's a problem that we've got to be willing to take a look at and address.
Thomas Bowman
Shruti, what is the Coalition For Integrity say about unlimited individual contributions?
Shruti Shah
There should be reasonable limits for all contributions. I mean, individuals are not any different from corporations, or from unions. We've seen wealthy individuals donate significant amounts of money to campaigns. And in Virginia, we've seen that in respect to gun legislation, in respect to people who are lobbying for environmental changes. And these are large sums of money. I think there should be reasonable limits on contributions for all. Unlimited contributions, it kind of makes the case that some people have more of a voice and more influence than others.
Thomas Bowman
Okay, we're running out of time. So let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about the report that we can expect on campaign finance from the General Assembly. We'll talk about how the study is being conducted and how they plan to monitor and enforce it. We are here with Delegate Marcus Simon from Falls Church and Shruti Shah from the Coalition For Integrity. We'll be right back.
Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia. We're going to talk about a study. Yes, that's right. In the time honored tradition of Virginia politics, instead of taking action this year to fix the problem of campaign finance reform, lawmakers decided to put together a group, a commission, and do a study. And so we're expecting that late in the year. Delegate Simon, I want to start with you. Who is going to be on this commission and like what's the makeup of this thing going to look like and what can we expect?
Marcus Simon
So the joint study is gonna have 14 members, there'll be dominated by legislators, I have to say, there'll be 10 legislative members, but also four non-legislative citizen members. And so we have six members appointed by the House of Delegates, one of whom shall be the Chair of the House Committee on Privileges and Elections. That's me, I wrote, I wrote helped write the study with Delegate Bulevar to make sure I got on it. And then five. But the Speaker of the House, frankly...I'll stop and tell you guys a quick story. You guys, this was originally drafted in introduced, I had some people come to me and say, "This is great. You guys are setting up this thing has to be made up of four citizens and 10 legislators. But how do we make sure that they don't put legislators that are the biggest recipients of corporate unlimited corporate cash on the on the subcommittee to stack it so that they come back with a report that says everything's fine," right, which was a concern. And so I said, "Well, I can't help with all of that. But how about if we put that the Chair of Privileges and Elections from each body, it has to be on it, though he know, at least I'll be there to keep an eye on it." And that seems to help with that concern. So that's part of the reason we have that piece of it in. And then we'll have again, we'll have some legislative members, non legislative members, I think two appointed by the Speaker of the House, one appointed by the Chairman of Rules in the Senate and one appointed by the Governor. So we get a little bit of statewide representation. And then that's that'll be the group, you could we have tried to do a larger group with more citizens, maybe. This struggle, as well in the Senate, there were bipartisan opposition to even doing the study on the Senate side, but it did manage to get through. So I think hopefully, we'll be able to do some work and take a look at some of these issues.
Thomas Bowman
Now, this isn't Virginia's first attempt at campaign finance reform. There's a Wilder commission. And then you tried it again, you being the General Assembly, tried it again, after the McDonnell scandal, what happened there and how is this study going to be any different?
Marcus Simon
So it's funny, I was just looking out there's the there's the Wilder Report where there's another very similar kind of makeup as a similar Joint Commission, joint study back in 1994, that the gear up with with Senator Senator Joe Garland and Delegate Alan Diamondstein is the Chair and Vice Chair that give you a sense of when that was done. And yeah, those recommendations were made, and some of them made it into law, and most of them didn't. Actually, Governor McAuliffe won the General Assembly so much. I think Governor McAuliffe created a an executive level commission to study ethics and campaign finance laws in Virginia in the wake of the McDonnell's scandal. And they had a number of recommendations, one of which was because I tried to wave this around, but to no avail, one of which was to ban the personal use of campaign funds. And that was back in I think, 2014-15. And, you know, what happens with a lot of those recommendations, they're sort of taken under advisement. And, you know, with McDonnell's scandal, yeah, we created, you know, we did we pass a big comprehensive Omnibus ethics bill, which did sort of the minimum necessary to say that we're we were trying to address the the issue. So we had a gift ban for the first time and a gift limit. And we have more reporting of lobbyists dinners during Session, and things like that. But then we have big exceptions for for widely attended events, and the exemptions start to eat the rule. So you do with a lot of these things, you pick a couple of the easy, low hanging fruit type of items, you do those right away, try and check the box that we've we've we've recovered from the scandal, we've addressed whatever the last scandal was, and let's just move on until the next scandal comes around.
Michael Pope
Well you know on that issue, I think one of the things that was done in reaction to the Bob McDonnell scandal, was the creation of a new ethics agencies or ethics groups, to oversee some of this stuff. One of the issues that the swamp index always looks at is what kind of powers these ethics agencies have, right?
Shruti Shah
Absolutely Michael. So it's not enough to really have a paper tiger, your ethics agencies actually have to have teeth. So what I'm trying to say is, it's not enough to just have an independent ethics agency, the ethics agency should also have the power to initiate its own investigations, accept anonymous complaints, to issue sanctions, to take personnel actions against individuals or officials who commit ethical violations. And Virginia's ethics agencies don't have that. And neither are the members of the ethics agency protected from removal without cause, which really also would play a great role in influencing their decisions, because they don't feel protected. But either which way, the ethics agencies have no investigative or enforcement power, so they're really a paper tiger.
Thomas Bowman
You know, it's interesting to point out that in the wake of the McDonnell's scandal, they didn't actually solve any of the problems that led up to it, right? So the McDonnell scandal happened because of in kind contributions and and also, it wasn't just Bob McDonnell. It was Ken Cuccinelli and the thinking within kind contributions is, would you rather be one of many who donates 1000 or potentially even $10,000 to an elected official or somebody running for office? Or would you rather be the guy who owns the plane and just let them hop around the whole state on your plane for free? Right? And there was no action from the General Assembly in the wake of the Bob McDonnell scandal to limit in kind contributions, specifically to statewide candidates. That was the problem, not to the Legislature. And also, there was, and I apologize, Marcus, there's a governor's, like an investment fund, what is the name of that fund?
Marcus Simon
Governor's Opportunity Fund, right?
Thomas Bowman
Right. So the other problem with the with the McDonnell era was the Governor's Opportunity Fund, which is basically a slush fund to convince corporations looking to relocate their headquarters to come to Virginia. Tim Kaine used it with Northrop Grumman. And later, Bob McDonnell used it with this...well this scam artist right, trying to push his his some, like, oil bank oil.
Michael Pope
Made from synthetic tobacco, not even the Virginia product.
Thomas Bowman
So what are we doing about what the real problems are? I'll stipulate to the point that it's not good to have unlimited contributions, and all you have to do is just report it. But it seems to me like these in kind contributions and issues with the executive are far more systemic problems than anything that the leg is facing?
Marcus Simon
Yeah, I mean, those are tough things to tackle. I mean, you know, it's interesting too, some of the reactions. You know, one of the things that the McDonnell scandal did is it did cut down on the number of in-session dinners that legislators got to go to, and I'll tell you that many folks missed them. And they bemoan the new group that was one of the new crop that came in 2014. Yeah, we were basically by being so loud mouth about this, we're kind of ruining things, right? And it used to be so much more fun to be a legislator. I suspect that, to some degree on the on the executive side, there's just not a big appetite to take them out on its own. It's just hard, right? I mean, and I'm certainly not one that advocates for a full time Legislature. But but you know, given the nature of our job, it's just a hard problem for us to tackle. But frankly, Thomas, I, you know, I haven't heard a whole lot of folks, really, I'm sure that this is something we can take on as part of this this study, I think it's a good topic for the bill of a study. That's not what I've heard a whole lot of people really honing in on it, because if that's the we can ban the gifts, right, which is what the Ethics Legislation is, you can't take these gifts. But if you don't describe it as a gift and say you describe it as an in kind campaign contribution, then it's fine. So I can no longer accept the gift of a day in the Redskin Suite, or the luxury suite or the Redskins game, but if it's a campaign contribution, and I'm invited to bring a prospective donor with me, to try and- or if there's a constituent that might be there, I can bring two right? Now it's an in kind campaign contribution. And then then it's completely okay. So that's certainly something that needs to be looked at. I don't know that anybody's really focused in on that. But I think it's a good point.
Michael Pope
You know, I'm not sure if your committee, commission, whatever it's going to be called, is going to look at this. But one issue that came up during this Session was campaign contributions while lawmakers are meeting. So in the normal General Assembly Session, there's like a blackout period where you can't take campaign cash while you're meeting and your committees and your writing laws and that sort of thing. But this year, there was a wrinkle, of course, because the second half of the Session wasn't an actual Session, it was a Special Session, which did not have that prohibition against taking campaign cash while you were lawmaking. Is the commission going to look at creating the similar sort of blackout period for Special Sessions?
Marcus Simon
Yeah, I think, yes, that's one that comes up a lot. I get a little nerdy here, probably. But your your audience, I think, is okay with getting a little nerdy on some of these things. The, the, the problem with the spirit of the Special Session seems like an obvious and easy fix, right? You can't raise money during regular Session, nor can you during Special Session. The problem is that, particularly when the Executive and the Legislature controlled by different parties, the party in charge of Legislature will try and use a Special Session as a way to reduce and deprive the Executive of some of their inherent powers. So if we, you know, when the Republicans, anytime we come back for any kind of Special Session, when we had Governor McAuliffe in charge, the Republicans would never adjourn the Special Session. Whatever work we'd come there to do would be done or not done. And then the Special Session would continue, and would never adjourn and because we were technically in Session, it deprived the Governor the right to make appointments, to replace judges, to take certain actions that they can take, without, with less input from the Legislature when we're not in Session. Well, but the problem was, then if since we were always in Special Session, you wouldn't want to have a fundraising blackout because then nobody could ever raise any money because we we spent like almost two years. Actually, I think the first two years of the Northam Administration, we're almost entirely in multiple overlapping Special Sessions. So on the one hand, do we want to sort of deprive the Legislature of that tool? I guess that depends, right? If we think we're going to have your united government for a while, then maybe that's not such a big deal. But if we're afraid that we might have an Executive of a different party, you don't want to get into that. So that's, I mean, it's a sort of a weird reason not to do it. But if you could distinguish between active Special Sessions and non active Special Sessions, that would be an issue. The other area we did make some progress on in the last two years, which is an unusual one, is we do have a better disclosure of the first two weeks of January. David Zero, a Republican Senator, I'll give him credit for this. You'll absorb it also, a newer member observed that in the Senate in particular, since they're only up for reelection every four years, for three years, they can receive contributions between the December 31st report and the start of Session, they can receive $10,000 from a casino interest, for instance, go through Session, vote on all these casino bills. And then they would never have to report that contribution until July. After veto Session, everything was over. And by the time nobody was paying attention. So he passed some legislation says you have to report large contributions received right before Session in a more timely fashion. But yeah, that is something that needs to be looked at. But again, I unless we stopped kind of playing these sort of parliamentary games, and these technical games of Special Session, it's gonna be hard to figure out how to address that that particular problem.
Thomas Bowman
Okay, we are running out of time. So I want to give each of you a chance to, to provide your final comments. Delegate Simon, we just heard from you. Shruti Shah, with the Coalition For Integrity, why don't you wrap or why don't you wrap us up with why we, why Virginia needs to consider campaign finance reform.
Shruti Shah
So absolutely, Virginia needs to consider campaign finance reform, because that's what the people in Virginia want. They want to make sure that the legislators are acting in the best interest of the constituents, so not not really to support special interests. What I am really pleased to see is that there is the study commission set up, and in terms of my final thoughts, I would say that it is really critical that this study is not a wasted opportunity. It's not just used to kick the can down the road. But really, it focuses on coming up with proposed legislation and then and it also conducts itself transparently and seeks input from citizens and groups such as us. And they also look to address concerns that legislative leaders have whether it's about pizza parties or other issues, just so that they can answer these concerns beforehand, and and bills are not stalled in the Senate. And secondly, I also think they should look at monitoring and enforcement as well as best practices in terms of that and really consider what funding resources are needed. I'll close out with that. It's just more of what I expect the study commission should consider.
Thomas Bowman
Great. Delegate Simon, any final thoughts?
Marcus Simon
Yeah, you know, I one of the things I said earlier actually kind of troubles me a little bit, which is that, you know, the fear, I said, I wasn't too worried about people trying to weaponize the accusations of personal use, because I think the public sort of figures we all do it anyway. But I think that's actually the argument for doing something and doing more. Shruti kind of said it too, it's what our folks expect. But, you know, we have a real problem, I think nationally, with people that just assume that politics don't work. The politicians don't have the people's best interests, but their own self interest in mind too often. And I think it would it would, if we can reframe some of this conversation about how we restore confidence in the entire system, and how we make laws and how we make decisions. I think we're at a really critically important time to be able to send that message to the public, because I think that democracy itself, there's a pretty large segment of the population that isn't sure that we wouldn't just be better off with with a, you know, a dictator, just telling us what was our best interest. I think if we want to save democracy, it sort of starts with with getting people to believe in it again. And I think that getting some of this, the dirty money out and showing we're serious about addressing campaign finance and doing what's right, is an important part of restoring people's confidence in our system.
Thomas Bowman
There's clearly a lot to unpack and we could spend all day on this, covering all the different permutations. We didn't even discuss the possibility for public financing of elections. And that is a huge angle that we might need to come back in the future and discuss. But that's all for right now. Thank you for listening to Transition Virginia. I'm Thomas Bowman. And my co host is Michael Pope. If you have comments or questions about what you just heard, or maybe you only want to tell us what you think about the show, write an email and send it to us at TransitionVApodcast@gmail.com so we can read it on the air. Subscribe to Transition Virginia anywhere pods are cast, follow the Transition Team on Twitter @TransitionVA and find us on the web at transitionvirginia.com. Don't forget to like and subscribe so you can enjoy our next episode of Transition Virginia.
