[ OUR OPINION ]
FOLLOWING a revamping of federal laws controlling campaign financing, the Legislature appears on the verge of approving major changes at the state level. These reforms should significantly improve the rules governing U.S. and Hawaii politics, but only after this year's elections, when both are to take effect. The Legislature should enact the reform and Governor Cayetano should sign it into law. Campaign-finance laws
get needed reform
THE ISSUE State legislative conferees have agreed on new restrictions to political contributions by corporations and labor unions.
State House and Senate conferees have endorsed a bill that would ban contributions by large corporations, labor unions and banks to political campaigns. Small corporations -- described by a revenue formula included in the bill -- would be allowed to give as much as $6,000 in a campaign but no more than what individuals can give to a single campaign -- as much as $2,000 to a candidate for a two-year office, $4,000 for four-year county office candidates and $6,000 for candidates for governor or lieutenant governor.
Also, any person who contributes to a state or county candidate would be forbidden from obtaining a contract with that level of government for two years following the election. Those making contributions during the two years prior to the election and receiving a contract afterward would be refunded the contribution.
Some contractors who are content with their unseemly relationship with political office holders have complained that the legislation would violate their free-speech rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected that argument in upholding a federal ban of contributions by federal contractors.
Contributions by state and county contractors have been a source of controversy and scandal in Hawaii for decades. Mayor Harris has been accused of accepting nearly $750,000 in contributions bundled by city contractors during his 2000 re-election campaign. The Campaign Spending Commission has fined some companies for violating contribution limits and referred those activities to the city prosecutor for review of possible criminal violations. Harris has denied any wrongdoing.
Nobody's First Amendment rights would be violated by the state legislation. Corporations have long been banned from direct campaign spending at the federal level. In Hawaii, they would be allowed to create political action committees for making contributions to candidates as long as corporate money is not used.
Company officials may -- and probably will -- support those political action committees from their own wallets. Corporations have been allowed to give money to national political parties, but that practice should end with the federal ban on distribution of such "soft money" to candidates, enacted by Congress last month.
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