(Host) It appears that campaign finance reform legislation is dead for this session.
Democratic leaders vowed to pass a bill in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows corporations and labor unions to spend an unlimited amount of money to influence a political campaign.
But gaining support for the plan in an election year has been a challenge.
VPR’s Bob Kinzel has more.
(Kinzel) Senate President Peter Shumlin is one of the co-sponsors of the campaign finance reform bill. At the time that the bill was introduced earlier this winter, Shumlin said it was critical to pass it to help lessen the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Vermont.
The legislation called for greater accountability to show which groups were paying for political ads, it mandated that corporate CEO’s appear at the end of ads, and it required that a corporation’s board of directors specifically approve of all expenditures for political advertising.
Shumlin says the Senate Government Operations committee passed out a scaled back version of the bill. When even this plan ran into problems on the Senate floor, it was sent back to committee where Shumlin says it will die:
(Shumlin) "One of my great disappointments is that’s it’s really difficult to write a campaign finance bill that corrects a horrendous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in an election year, because politicians don’t like to change the system. They’re going to regret it this time because that decision is going to allow corporate money to influence Vermont‘s elections in ways that we’ve never imagined."
(Kinzel) Senate Judiciary chairman Dick Sears is another co-sponsor of the bill.
He says he’s very disappointed by this outcome. He’s concerned that a number of corporations will spend a lot of money to influence Vermont’s elections this fall – including Entergy – the owners of Vermont Yankee:
(Sears) "It would be in Entergy’s interest to have legislators who are supportive of their position in the state senate to reverse that vote. Would they spend money on it? I don’t know. Would we know that they spent money on it without this change in the law? Probably not. So I’m concerned about that particular facet of it and with an open gubernatorial seat I’m also concerned about the money that will be pouring in there."
(Kinzel) Not all senators are disappointed that the legislation has been shelved. Franklin senator Randy Brock is a strong critic of the bill:
(Brock) "It goes to the issue that I think the intent of this is: We don’t like the Supreme Court’s decision so therefore we’re going to try to impose as many barriers as we can to someone lawfully exercising first amendment rights that the Supreme Court guaranteed. We may not like the decision, but I don’t think it gives us the right to attempt to subvert it."
(Kinzel) Brock questions if the Court’s decision will have much impact in Vermont because for years it’s been legal for corporations to spend an unlimited amount of money to influence a political campaign.
He argues it hasn’t been a problem in the past and he doubts that it will be in the future.
For VPR News, I’m Bob Kinzel in Montpelier.