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Pennsylvania: The Wild West of campaign financing
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share thisSecretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes is an incurious fellow, in keeping with the intent of state lawmakers.
The Department of State, which is under Cortes' direction, is supposed to enforce campaign finance laws. Instead, it is a glorified file clerk.
Borys Krawczeniuk of The Times-Tribune reported in the Nov. 1 Sunday Times that the campaign committee for Sen. Bob Mellow of Archbald, the state Senate minority leader, had issued more than $188,000 worth of checks to "cash." Contrary to the clear requirements of state law, the committee never disclosed to whom the checks were issued or for what purpose.
That is in keeping with Pennsylvania's status as the Wild West of campaign financing - just about anything goes. There are no limits on contributions and, obviously, scant enforcement of transparency and disclosure laws.
Whenever reform advocates call for contribution limits, lawmakers respond that the key issue is not contributions, but ensuring transparency so that citizens know who is giving what to whom, and how it is being spent - managing not to laugh out loud as they do so.
Then, lawmakers fund the Department of State elections bureau at a level that virtually precludes true transparency and comprehensive disclosure. The office has four full-time staff members to monitor thousands of campaign documents. And it contracts for audits of just 25 reports a year - just 3 percent of filed finance reports. And those audits cover limited periods.
The office investigates campaign finance irregularities only if there is a complaint from the public, Cortes wrote in a letter to The Times-Tribune, adding that he thinks that is just fine.
Thus, the politicians and Cortes add his office to the vast web of bureaucratic machinery that exists to protect, rather than to hold accountable, state lawmakers. Just as lawmakers count on the Ethics Commission to approve whatever it is they want to do, they rely on Cortes to file away their finance reports and forget about them, unless a citizen files a specific complaint.
According to Cortes, an audit of six months of the Mellow committee's activity did not raise a question about the practice of writing checks to "cash" and not disclosing the use of the money, so the practice must be OK.
The auditor, naturally, referred questions to Cortes' office, which referred to the audit.
First, it is a curious audit of any enterprise that doesn't seek receipts for the disbursement of cash. And the audit covered just six months. The $188,000 is about 6.5 percent of the $2.9 million disbursed by the committee over nine years.
This performance of the Department of State as a lap dog is yet another cry for reform of the state government. Until then, citizens will continue to be on their own in seeking accountability and transparency from their elected officials.
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