The Oshkosh Northwestern is running a piece by Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, the state's largest non-partisan reform advocacy organization, commenting on the prospects for real ethics reform in the coming years. A choice bit from the article:
Would anybody out there in campus blog land be interesting in pressuring legislators to move on these ideas?
Meaningful campaign spending limits, fully-funded, publicly financed grants to candidates and to the targets of outside special interest spending, prohibiting campaign fund raising while the state budget is under consideration, disclosure and regulation of campaign ads masquerading as issue advocacy, elimination of the special interest group-funded legislative leadership slush fund campaign committees known as legislative campaign committees, restrictions on out-of-state special interest money and a non-partisan state elections and ethics entity that actually has the ability and power to find and root out corruption in state government -- are all reforms Wisconsin needs -- and has needed for years.The commentary also makes note of a "bipartisan campaign finance reform proposal unveiled this Fall by State Senators Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) and Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) that would clean up state campaigns and end the corrupting influence of special interest money that has undermined public policy-making in the State Capitol for years." Governor Doyle has said he supports this bill (it died in the Republican legislature). Hopefully it will pass this time around.
Governor Doyle and a more reform-friendly Legislature have a precious but small window of opportunity to get these needed reforms passed and enacted into law.
Would anybody out there in campus blog land be interesting in pressuring legislators to move on these ideas?
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