Monday, April 24, 2006
New Bill Threatens Clean Elections
Larry Sakin in Opednews discusses the current bill SCR1013 that would aim to dismantle Clean Elections:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_larry_sa_060423_arizona_roundup.htm
"On the state level, a Senate/House compromise bill just passed the Senate Appropriations Committee to render the 1998 voter-passed Clean Elections laws effectively mute. The Bill, SCR1013, was written by Rick Murphy, R-Glendale, who strangely enough, was a clean elections candidate. Problem is Rep. Murphy received a $10,000 fine in June of 2005 by the Clean Elections Commission for overspending. So in essence, Murphy wants to gut the laws he violated, thereby wiping his corrupt ass clean with the paper the law was written on. But Murphy isn’t stopping there. He wants to raise the cap on individual contributions to privately funded legislative candidates to a total of $10,000. The current limit is $296.00 for a legislative race and $760.00 for a statewide race. He also wants to remove the limit of $3500.00 from private donors to all candidates.
Considering the current US House corruption scandal which made the name ‘Jack Abramoff’ a synonym for greed, you’d think that Mr. Murphy would be a bit more cautious about sponsoring a bill which allows politicians a financial windfall of campaign contributions."
"Murphy thinks the electorate is just way too stupid to understand the whole campaign finance situation. Should the full Senate pass the Bill, it will be included on the November 2006 ballot."
---------------oOo---------------
