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The Massachusetts State House in Boston. The idea of introducing more charter schools in Massachusetts, believed to be an emotional topic that divides lawmakers and feeds into policy differences, spurred long recesses in the House after legislation facilitating more charters hit the House floor on Wednesday.
(THE REPUBLICAN FILE)
Update, 7:40 p.m.: The Massachusetts Senate passed the bill Wednesday evening with only one senator dissenting. It will now go to Gov. Deval Patrick's desk.
BOSTON - The Massachusetts House passed a bill on Wednesday requiring additional disclosures for super political action committees and raising the maximum donation to state candidates.
"While we cannot stop the influx of money into this year's elections and beyond...we can certainly shed light on these shadowy groups that are going to spend dark money, to disclose where the money's coming from and how it's going to be spent," said Rep. James Murphy, a Weymouth Democrat and co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Election Laws.
The bill, H. 4366, passed the House 140 to 10.
State Sen. Barry Finegold, an Andover Democrat and co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Election Laws, said he is hopeful the Senate will pass the bill either Wednesday night or Thursday. The legislative session ends on Thursday.
"I think any time that you provide more disclosure, it is a good thing for democracy," Finegold said.
The governor has not said whether he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.
The bill includes numerous reforms to the state campaign finance system. It raises the amount an individual can contribute to a state candidate from $500 to $1,000, beginning in January.
Beginning immediately, it requires that all groups making independent expenditures disclose their donors within seven days, or within 24 hours if it is 10 days or less before an election. (Currently, the groups only have to report their expenditures during that same time frame.)
It also requires that ads created by independent expenditure groups include the names of the group's top five donors in the ad, if the donors' contributions exceed $5,000.
Among other provisions, the bill eliminates aggregate campaign limits – limits on the total amount a person can contribute over the course of an election cycle – in accordance with a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. It requires all mayoral candidates to file reports with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance.
During discussion on the House floor, supporters of the bill said it was a response to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, which opened up the door to unlimited spending by independent expenditure groups, commonly called super PACs.
"This legislation is an excellent first challenge to Citizens United. I believe setting this precedent is going to encourage many other states throughout the nation to follow suit," said Rep. Linda Campbell, a Methuen Democrat and vice chair of the Joint Committee on Election Laws.
Rep. Shawn Dooley, a Norfolk Republican, encouraged Republicans to support the bill as a step toward "transparency and accountability and disclosure."
Good government groups like Common Cause Massachusetts have been strong supporters of the bill.
But it also has its critics. Paul Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, said a provision expanding disclosure restrictions relating to non-profits "creates a chilling effect on free speech."
Current law requires a non-profit, like the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, to disclose donations made specifically for electioneering communications, ads broadcast around the time of an election that relate to the election but do not directly support or oppose a candidate. The new law requiring ads to disclose a group's top five donors would apply to all the non-profit's donors, not only those donations made specifically for electioneering communications.
"It's just there to intimidate donors so that they don't give to organizations, or if they do give to organizations, those organizations are reluctant to participate in the democratic process in educating the public on how lawmakers vote," Craney said.
Craney said the provision could potentially lead to a lawsuit from his group and others, if it is signed into law.
The bill also includes a provision written by Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, an Amherst Democrat, requiring the state's Executive Office of Administration and Finance to write a fiscal note informing voters how a ballot question would affect state and municipal finances, to be published in a voter information guide.
The provision, which does not go into effect until after the 2014 elections, has come under fire from Citizens for Limited Taxation, an anti-tax group that is currently pushing for the repeal of an automatic increase in the state gas tax.
Barbara Anderson, executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, said the provision could be used to dissuade voters from passing tax cuts since the administration is likely to warn of terrible consequences if a tax cut is passed. She called it "the destruction of the initiative petition process." "Once you start to change the rules that have worked so well for all of us across the political spectrum, then you're throwing an imbalance into the system," Anderson said.
Finegold defended the provision, saying voters should vote based on facts. "Having an understanding of what the economic impact on the budget will be is very good for taxpayers," Finegold said.
The bill does not include an amendment that had been pushed by some Republicans limiting the size of contributions that unions can make.