Clean money repo men - political reform agency in Massachusetts has power to seize government-provided cars from corrupt politicians

Progressive, The, June, 2002 by John Nichols

Remember the old posters that read, "What if schools got all the money they needed and the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale?" How about this for a variation: What if politicians had to give up their official cars, office furniture, and prime parking spots to pay for clean campaigns?

Equally absurd, right? Not anymore. In Massachusetts this spring, campaign finance reformers won court authority to come for the cars, the furniture, and the prime parking spots that have long been the perks of political power on Boston's Beacon Hill.

"We have complete discretion to seize any property of the Commonwealth," announced John Bonifaz, a lawyer for the reformers. And within days, the seizures had begun. To kick things off, a pair of state-owned 2001 Ford Expedition sports utility vehicles and eleven 2002 Ford Taurus station wagons were put up for auction to the highest bidder at a raucous public sale in late April. As the cars were being dispatched, there was talk that the desk of the Massachusetts Speaker of the House, the leading obstructionist, would soon appear on the auction block.

How did campaign finance reformers become repo men?

Here's the short answer: In November 1998, Massachusetts voters passed a clean money law by a 2-to-1 margin. But the legislature refused to release the $23 million set aside to provide public funding for campaigns in statewide and legislative campaigns in Massachusetts this year. So the reformers sued, along with Warren Tolman, a Democrat seeking to win his party's nomination for governor. They thought they were on solid ground, since the state constitution says the Commonwealth must appropriate "such money as may be necessary to carry such law into effect."

But in a decision that even reformers described as "incredible," the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in January that the legislature was violating the Constitution by failing either to fund the "clean money" candidates or to repeal the law. "The current situation, in which the Clean Elections Law has not been repealed but no money has been appropriated to fund it, does more than disadvantage clean elections candidates," the ruling read. "It frustrates the will of the majority of the people who elected to provide an alternative, assertedly more democratic system of campaign financing for Massachusetts electoral offices than the current private financing scheme."

The court went a step further. It remanded the case to Justice Martha Sosman, who was charged with assuring that qualified candidates got the public funds they were owed. Sosman bluntly declared: "Tolman is owed $811,050, and is entitled to a judgment in his favor in that amount." Tolman quickly received a check for $582,093 from a special state fund for payment of legal settlements. But that emptied the fund, and Tolman was still owed $228,957. Additionally, "clean money" legislative candidate James Eldridge, of Acton, was due more than $8,000. Green Party candidates were also heading toward qualification under the Clean Elections Law.

Lawyers for the reform groups sought to get Sosman to begin ordering payments from the $23 million Clean Elections Fund. With Speaker Thomas Finneran and Attorney General Thomas Reilly screeching about how the court would be overstepping its bounds if it began allocating money, Sosman came up with a novel compromise. If the legislature would not release the money to fund the law, she decided in April, then state assets would have to be auctioned off to raise the money.

Sosman explained that she had reached her dramatic decision because the legislature had acted in "bad faith" even after the Supreme Judicial Court's January ruling. "The legislature stands in blatant and flagrant violation of a clear constitutional mandate," the justice wrote. "The legislature has, for whatever reason, chosen to respond to this `constitutional crisis' with brinkmanship rather than statesmanship."

Auctioning off state property at "distress-sale prices" might be unfortunate, Sosman admitted, but it was an unavoidable consequence of the legislature's refusal to respect the will of the people. "This unquestionably inflicts needless damage on the Commonwealth," Sosman wrote. "However ... the only way to break this impasse is to let the auctioneer's hammer fall again and again."

Reformers have made it quite clear that obstructionist legislators can expect to feel the sting of that hammer. "We are moving forward on choosing property of the Commonwealth that will satisfy these judgments, as well as making it clear where the accountability lies for having placed the state in this position," announced John Bonifaz, the executive director of the National Voting Rights Institute.

Inspired by a successful clean money effort in Maine in 1996, Massachusetts activists began organizing a similar initiative campaign in their state. The Massachusetts campaign focused on basic democracy issues, noting that the state's existing private-money-driven campaign finance structure had tipped the balance so much in favor of incumbents and insiders that 70 percent of legislative races in 1998 were not even contested. The promise of a politics in which voters would actually be offered choices proved appealing. In November 1998, the reformers won big--securing a two-thirds vote in favor of a "Clean Elections Law" that would allow candidates who agree to fixed spending limits and $100 contribution limits to receive public money to pay for their primary and general election campaigns.