Last February, we posted an entry flagging potential concerns arising from the SEC’s new pay-to-play rules for investment advisors as applied to presidential candidates. Admittedly, at the time we were talking about Governors Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels, but the same holds true now for Texas Governor Rick Perry.
Continue Reading...By Stefan Passantino & Ben Keane
It has been almost exactly 19 months since the Supreme Court handed down its controversial decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, but the plot continues to thicken as those favoring mandatory corporate disclosure of political activities look for a non-judicial fix to the ruling.
To date, the fields are littered with detritus of failed efforts at identifying a mechanism that compels corporations and wealthy individuals to disclose all exercise of their newly-recognized First Amendment freedoms. This blog has previously reported on failed efforts to mandate such disclosure in Congress, as well as the Obama White House’s proposed executive order circumventing both Congress and the Supreme Court. To achieve these same goals, groups such as Democracy21 and the Campaign Legal Center have promoted changes to the Internal Revenue Code, while the American Bar Association has encouraged Congress to make pertinent amendments to the Lobbying Disclosure Act.
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Atlanta’s Fulton County Commission met yesterday as predicted here to take up its latest pay-to-play resolution.
Everyone’s dying to know what happened.
Drum roll . . . It failed.
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We just posted about a pay-to-play resolution being considered by the Fulton County, Georgia, Board of Commissioners. That post considers whether the campaign regulation proposed by the county is good policy and further warns about the legal pitfalls encountered in other states adopting similar proposals.
What I didn’t address is the possibility that someone at Fulton County already knows the resolution is legally invalid as an attempt to regulate campaign activity statutorily reserved to the State. The evidence would appear to indicate that they do.
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Fulton County, Georgia – home county to the City of Atlanta - is poised once again to take up an ordinance designed to prohibit any corporation, officer, agent or individual who makes relevant campaign contributions or gifts from seeking county contracts. Just yesterday, the Fulton County Commission announced an agenda item for its August 17, 2011 recess meeting. Deep on page 12 of that agenda is a single line item styled:
Request approval of a Resolution amending the Fulton County Code of Laws regarding campaign contributions from entities doing business with, or seeking to do business with, Fulton County.
The resolution to be taken up, proposed by Commissioner Emma Darnell, closely mirrors a pay-to-play contract restriction proposed two years ago for the City of Atlanta by Common Cause Georgia. In its current form, the proposed resolution provides that no corporation, entity, or individual will have the right to bid for, or hold, a county contract if it has either made a campaign contribution of $500 or more to a County Commissioner or has provided any direct or indirect gift or contribution to a County Commissioner or any Fulton County employee.
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The American Bar Association (ABA) has weighed in on a proposal to prohibit federal lobbyists from contributing to, or raising money for, those they seek to influence on Capitol Hill. Yesterday, the ABA’s House of Delegates approved a resolution calling for several significant changes to the Lobbying Disclosure Act – the federal legislation governing lobbyist registration and disclosure.
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