Cross-posted from michiganliberal.com
"Right now, my confidence in the enforcement division in the Department of State is really shot. I just don't know that it's worth it."
Today we bring you the final installment of my exclusive interview with Michigan Campaign Finance Netork Executive Director Rich Robinson. In this segment, Rich tells us about some of the shortcomings of our state's system with respect to tracking the influence of money in politics, as well as some of his ideas for how fix it.
MF: How does
the process work in Michigan for prosecuting campaign finance violations?
RR: The
Bureau of Elections (in the Secretary of State's office) receives complaints
for alleged violations of the campaign finance act. Historically, they have
made clear that if you haven't got a case completely documented within the four
corners of the paper you might as well forget about it, because they don't do
investigations. Beyond that, there is a peculiarity in the law that really
makes it so that nothing ever happens. And the peculiarity is that in all
cases, the Department of State has a mandate to pursue conciliation. Not to
enforce or prosecute violations of the law, but to conciliate...to find some
low-level resolution. I would characterize it by saying that their posture is
that "we are willing to accept any lie you are willing to tell." They
don't seem to be interested in pursuing the veracity of any rationale that's
presented about a violation. I've had personal experience along those lines
that seems to me to be absolutely outrageous. I have filed a modest number of
complaints...and it really takes the incentive to complain away, because
there's really not much enthusiasm for enforcing the law.
MF: The only
complaints I seem to remember hearing is if someone is late in filing a
campaign finance statement, doesn't file at all - things that are pretty
obvious and easy to prove. Anything beyond that in terms of someone funneling
money from one PAC to another illegally...I don't remember hearing of any cases
like that has gone anywhere.
RR: I filed
a couple that fit that particular pattern. One was a case of moving corporate
money through a PAC. Another involved money laundering. One of those has been
moved on to the Attorney General for investigation, so I probably shouldn't say
anything about it. The other one was one of these conciliation type things, and
to me, the fact that it was conciliated away was just an absolute outrage. I
think that generally, citizens and voters need to be exposed to this particular
story so we can understand that our law is so flaccid that, in effect, we
really don't have any law. People who are law-abiding by nature will follow the
letter and the spirit of the law. People who aren't will cheat, and there's all
kinds of cheating going on.
MF: Do you
have any hopes that the law will ever be changed? Realistic hopes, that is...
RR: I guess
we'll see. These examples are rare. And that's the distressing part of it. When
you finally nail somebody and you really have the evidence and would like to
see prosecution as an outcome, and it's just conciliated away...it leads to a
real frustration. That's just at one level. In the case of following these Beer
and Wine contributions (see yesterday's segment), I chose to make a list of how much the Beer and Wine
Wholesalers had contributed to officeholders. And I did it by what the
officeholders reported receiving. But a colleague of mine looked at it from
what the Beer and Wine Wholesalers reported giving. And of all the amazing
things, several thousand dollars disappeared between the time they were given
to the time they were received. They just kind of disappeared into the vapors.
MF: Don't
they have cancelled checks somewhere?
RR: But
nobody's asking about it. Nobody's asking about it. Now I could file a
complaint about it. But right now I'm kind of miffed about their whole thing -
their enforcement veracity.
MF: So why
bother?
RR: Well,
that's kind of where I sit right now...
MF: You're
the executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network and you're
saying that you don't want to bother filing a complaint because it just won't
go anywhere.
RR: That's
the problem, and I would say...
MF: That's a
pretty powerful commentary. I mean, this is your job, this is what you do...is to
follow these things and - you're saying the system just isn't going to deal with
it?
RR: That's
right. The system will not respond to a completely documented violation of the
law. I could go, I've got at least 10 other complaints I could file tomorrow if
I thought it would make a difference. But right now I don't. So, we have this
situation, where, I'm not sure if a contribution is reported made by a
party...but not reported received...has that money been converted to personal
use? What happened to that money? Is it just sloppy bookkeeping? Is it fraud?
What's going on? It would be interesting to explore this and find out. But
right now, my confidence in the enforcement division in the Department of State
is really shot. I just don't know that it's worth it.
MF: It would
seem like you could go to the courts...
RR: And I'd
like to know if I could sue somebody for dereliction of duty here. And I guess
that's what I need to investigate, because I've kind of put my faith in
following the process as it exists and you'll be rewarded by a positive action
in enforcement, and that's just not the case.
MF: We have
a number of local elections this year - particularly in the City of Detroit,
where there's a Mayor's race. What do we know about the three major candidates
there? What kind of reporting system do they have there? Or is there a
reporting system?
RR: It's
actually much like the states. The state system follows almost the same
calendar, and for that reason we know almost nothing about what's going on in
the fundraising there. Because everyone filed a report at the end of January
telling everyone how much they had raised in calendar year 2004. They'll file
their first report on July 22. That's the first we'll know about how much money
they've spent.
MF: That's
the first we'll know? Two weeks before the election?
RR: The
thing about this is that millions of dollars have been raised - we know that.
The City Council, the Mayor have taken actions, have used contractors, have
given contracts...and I think it would be interesting to know: is there any
relationship between campaign contributions and policies that are made and
contracts that are let. We have the same problem in the state of Michigan, if I
could jump back to the state. This year, since nobody's up for election,
they'll file one report next February 1st. In the meantime, there are hundreds
of fundraisers in Lansing - literally hundreds of fundraisers, literally
millions of dollars raised, budgets are written, laws are written, winners and
losers are chosen out of this process and we can't follow the money because
they don't report but once a year. It's disgraceful, really. We have no
transparency as far as the practical aspect of following money in politics.
MF: So by
the time the report has come out, the deed has been done, the legislation has
been signed into law or blocked. It's just a matter of archaeology at that
point.
RR: Exactly.
Now a much better way to do this would be to say that every time you raise $500
or $200 or $1,000, you have to file a report so we can see who is giving you
money. While you have committees holding hearings on deregulation or
re-regulation of electricity in Michigan, we should know to whom is DTE Energy
giving money, to whom is Consumers Energy giving money, while the policy debate
is ongoing. Not after the fact.
MF: Does any
other state have a system like that?
RR: Not that
I know of. But we certainly have the infrastructure to do it. There's nothing
to stop Michigan from doing the right thing by the voters of letting people see
what's going on.
MF: I like
that idea.
RR: Federal
officers and candidates in a non-election year have to file quarterly. There's
no excuse for going a whole year without reporting. They might whine that it's
an inconvenience, but so what? What do you do when you hold a fundraiser? Do
you put those checks in a drawer till December 1st and then make record of them
and then put them in the bank? I don't think so. You're making your records as
you take the money in, you put it in the bank as you take the money in, and you
should be disclosing it to the public as you take the money in.
MF: If you
could make one change to Michigan's Campaign Finance laws what would it be?
RR: I think
if I could only have one, it would be to improve the timeliness of reporting.
That's something that it's almost impossible to argue with. What's the
rationale for keeping it secret? There really is no sound rationale. If I got a
second, it would be to have contribution limits for PACs and political parties.
We have PACs, where people literally put in a million dollars. If you look at
federal law, there are such limits. There are limits about what individuals can
give to all candidates, all PACs, and all party committees combined. It's $105,000
in a year now. So that tends to keep an individual or a narrow group of
individuals from completely dominating the political process.
MF: What
about on the other end of it. Some suggest that the main cost is TV
advertising...do we need to do something about that - whether it's giving
candidates free airtime or some other kind of limit?
RR: I think
there's real merit in that. When you look at the fact that still broadcasters
are using a public resource - the bandwidth of the airwaves that's assigned to
television - we have a right to expect a return on that public good, and that
would be: how about some serious coverage of elections? Not just the polling
and fundraising horse race. How about a serious treatment of what people would
do on issues; trying to have a better-informed electorate. I don't think that's
too much to ask for allowing these broadcasters to hold licenses that are
worth, literally, millions of dollars.
MF: Anything
else you want to add?
RR: You
know, on the Proposal 2 thing (same-sex marriage or any similar union), I keep
wondering: you know the Catholic Church put a million dollars into it? Did they
just take that out of the collection plate? Or was that an Opus Dei special
that Tom Monaghan funded. And why doesn't some good Catholic ask this question:
we're closing all of these Catholic schools in Detroit...while the diocese gave
a half million dollars to kick gay people around? The ultimate irony, to me, is
that these are people that had a decades long conspiracy to protect their perverted
pedophiles. And this is their response, to attack the civil rights of mutually
agreeing couples? To me, the moral authority of the Catholic Church is shot.
MF: I guess
that brings up another question. We always hear about the rise of the moral majority.
Here we have the DeVoses and Monaghan...but are we seeing any kind of
out-of-state money to push these kinds of causes.
RR: Proposal
2, the ban on same-sex marriage or any similar union, actually brought in the
two leading pols for influencing this kind of thing: Jim Dobson and Tony
Perkins in the
Family Research Council were both involved in a heavy way in the
pro-Proposal 2 movement. The FRC put in a couple hundred thousand dollars here,
and the
Focus on the Family group was good for $70,000. So, yeah, the outstate
interests are really playing heavily, and of course Connerly is really the
driving force behind this ban of consideration of race, gender, ethnic origin
for purposes of hiring, contracts, or admission to public institutions.
MF: Do we
need limitations on out-of-state contributions?
RR: I don't
know if that would be constitutional. I certainly think that if we had limits
on what any individual could do, it would prevent somebody like
Ward Connerly
from coming in and defining our state's culture for us.
MF: The idea
of the ballot proposal was supposed to be that it was a progressive kind of
thing, that citizens who feel strongly about an issue can come together on
their own to put something before voters. It's the most Democratic form of
participation that we have. Now, we've seen the casino thing, the anti-gay
amendment, the affirmative action proposal...these are things that aren't
necessarily coming from the ground up, they're coming from the top down.
RR: Not at
all, they're special interests and ideologues that have a ton of money that are
driving things. The one exception to the trend right now is the
dove shooting
amendment. That group got enough signatures to get on the ballot by spending
$65,000. Now the Civil Rights Initiative took a million to get on the ballot,
Proposal 1 took $27 million, Proposal 2 spent $3 or $4 million.
MF: So it's
still possible to get on the ballot the old fashioned way.
RR: It's
still possible. The question is: how viable of a campaign can they run
afterwards. Essentially there was no opposition to the doves proposal getting
on the ballot. But there will be opposition when it comes time to vote. So,
will they be able to sustain a campaign.
MF: Remember
the Merian's Friends proposal (right-to-die). I seem to recall that they were
dramatically outspent.
RR: What
we're seeing with this dove hunting question is, all right, they did get on the
ballot, will they be viable when it comes to actually persuading the voters in
the months leading up to the election. And that remains to be seen.
MF:
Especially in the
face of opposition that will, most likely, be heavily funded.
RR: I would
think so. That won't just be sportsmen. That would probably be the gun lobby as
well. Anything that sets parameters around the use of guns is a challenge to
them that they can't resist.
Not a pretty
picture. Money makes the world go round. (laughter) It makes politics go around
, anyway.