Campaign Finance Bill Clears Both Chambers of the Legislature But Its Future Is Uncertain

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has “considerable concerns” about the legality and constitutionality of a campaign finance bill that cleared the both chambers of the General Assembly.

“The governor will wait to see what is ultimately presented to him but he has considerable concerns about the legality of the proposal in its current form,” said Andrew J. McDonald, Malloy’s general counsel. “We continue to analyze the constitutional aspects of the proposal and if it reaches the governor’s desk, he will have to weigh all those considerations before making that determination.”

The House debated for more than three hours before approving the measure by a vote of 94 to 54 early on Tuesday.

The state Senate took up the bill late Tuesday night; it cleared that chamber by a vote of 20-15 just after midnight.

The bill makes several sweeping changes to the rules governing the way elections in Connecticut are financed and raises the amounts that can be donated to campaign committees.

“There’s been an influx of private dollars, independently expended, with no accountability thrown at races around our country,” Rep. Russ Morin, D-Wethersfield, co-chairman of the Government Elections and Administration committee, said during the debate in the House.

The bill contains broad new reporting requirements regarding campaign contributions. It would require the boards of directors of any corporation or nonprofit group to vote every time that entity spent more than $4,000 in a political expenditure, a provision that sparked an outcry from both the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut and the 10,000-member Connecticut Business and Industry Association.

“You know it’s an interesting dynamic when the ACLU and the CBIA are joining forces to [oppose] a piece of legislation,” observed McDonald.

Currently, large corporations like Hartford-based United Technologies and Fairfield-based General Electric only convene their boards for huge issues and never sign off on bills as small as $4,000. The board would not only need to convene, but the vote by the board would need to be published on the company’s website within 48 hours. The corporations said that board of directors are not involved in the day-to-day operations of the corporation and only set broad policies. A lower-level employee in the company would be approving expenses at the level of $4,000.

The same would hold true for non-profit advocacy groups.

The ACLU and other advocacy groups said that could result in a chilling effect of the group’s free speech rights.

“The ACLU of Connecticut supports many aspects of campaign finance reform, but this legislation fails to improve the integrity of campaigns while seriously threatening the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech,” said Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut.

Particularly troubling to the ACLU is the fact that the bill defines an independent political expenditure as communication in any form that references a public official who is also a political candidate within a certain period before an election.

“An action alert from the ACLU, or Planned Parenthood or the Family Institute of Connecticut asking citizens to contact their legislators could trigger the exposure of [those groups'] top five donors,” Schneider said.

Joseph Brennan, a senior vice president who is the chief lobbyist for CBIA at the Capitol, said the provisions that have been lobbied by CBIA and the ACLU were still in Section 10 of the legislation Tuesday night.

“That language is virtually unchanged,” Brennan told Capitol Watch.

One change was made to the bill: As initially drafted, the bill would have increased the public financing for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in the 2014 election to $9 million, up from the current maximum of $6 million. But after opposition emerged, that aspect of the bill was dropped.

McDonald said the governor’s office reached out to senior legislative staff over the past week in an effort to improve the bill.

The governor’s office “had made some suggestions about how to address some of the practical and constitutional concerns in the bill,” he said. “The bill does not include any of those.”