Arizona Official Says Campaign Finance Reform Working Great

by Paul Nyden with Phil Kabler, Charleston Gazette, February 24, 2006

On the day an Arizona official lauded publicly funded campaigns, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said an election reform bill is dead in West Virginias Legislature for this year.

Todd Lang says Arizonas clean elections laws have increased voter participation and countered the impact of negative political advertisements. Lang heads Arizonas Citizens Clean Election Commission, created by the reform law passed in 1998.

The Arizona legislation generates money to finance political campaigns, Lang said, primarily through a surcharge on all state fines and penalties, as well as $5 voluntary individual checkoffs on state income tax returns.

The Arizona law does not prevent candidates from raising funds privately, but provides an alternative to candidates who pledge to limit their total expenditures if they receive public money.

The Arizona bill set strict limits on the amount of private contributions candidates can raise and still qualify for public funds from $2,650 in early contributions for legislative candidates to $42,440 for gubernatorial candidates.

In the last election in 2004, 56 percent of all candidates participated, Lang told Gazette representatives Thursday. In 2006, we expect 60 percent of candidates will.

The Arizona law also contains a provision that triples a candidates campaign finances whenever the Citizens Clean Election Commission finds a candidate to be the victim of negative campaign attack ads.

Lang also spoke to the Senate Finance Committee, but Finance Chairman Walt Helmick, D-Pocahontas, pulled a bill to allow public financing of state House and Senate campaigns (SB126) off the committee agenda, effectively killing the legislation for this session.

Helmick said he believes the time will come for West Virginia to join those states, but said the issue needs to be studied. As a practical matter, publicly financed campaigns could not begin until the 2008 elections.

I think thats a piece of legislation we will see again, he said.