Vermont’s campaign finance reporting rules among weakest

Editor’s note: Jon Margolis, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, runs the blog Vermont News Guy.

It’s campaign time, and all around Vermont the candidates for governor are on the job and on the road.

The five Democrats have appeared together at close to 40 forums, or “debates” as they are not quite accurately called. (Lt.Gov. Brian Dubie, assured the Republican nomination, declines invitations to participate). All of the contenders sit for interviews with reporters, speak to various gatherings, and even do a little street-corner glad-handing.

But there’s one thing none of them stop doing—raising money.

On their web sites, on their cell phones as they head from one event to the next, early in the morning over breakfast or late at night over whatever, the candidates are asking for money. They ask supporters, friends, family, acquaintances, businesses, unions, interest groups, and lobbyists, who have a vested interest in contributing at least a little bit to any potential winner.

The fund-raising beat goes on all around Vermont, and beyond. Though all the campaigns like to brag about how they rely on the small contributions of individual Vermonters, they also raise as much as they can out of state. Sen. Peter Shumlin was in Boston the week before last at a fund-raiser featuring appearances by best-selling authors Stephen King and John Irving. Earlier this month, Dubie went to Washington for a fund-raiser hosted by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

And how much are all these candidates raising?

Patience. The answer to that question is not far off. The candidates have to file their campaign finance information with the Secretary of State’s office on July 15. Then the world will know how much they have raised and spent since the last time they had to file—a year ago, July 15, 2009.

No, that was not a typo. Under Vermont law, candidates have to file their “finance disclosure” forms on July 15 of the odd-numbered year, and then “40 days before the primary election (that’s this July 15) and on August 25, September 25, (and) October 25.”

That’s all until the election. The law says that “not later than 40 days after the general election, candidates must file a final report which lists a complete accounting of all contributions and expenditures.”

But by then, whoever has won has won.

According to Mike Wessler of the National Institute on Money in State Politics, Vermont’s campaign finance reporting requirements are by no means the most lenient in the country. But they aren’t among the most stringent, either. In fact, they are among the weakest in the Northeast.

Were these candidates running in New Hampshire (all this info from the National Institute’s web site), they would have had to report their financial information last May and November, once this August, twice each in September and October. The candidates in Maine have six reports due from last summer until Election Day, New York candidates have to file eight times, and Massachusetts statewide campaigns must file 10 financial reports in the election year alone, after a year-end report last December.

Not long from now, according to some experts, all this filing deadline business might have become a quaint memento of the past. The technology already exists, they say, to make public campaign contributions as they come in and expenses as they go out.

“There’s no reason you couldn’t have all online contributions and expenses in real time,” said Gabriela Schneider, the communications director of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington.

By and large, Vermont’s campaign finance laws are among the nation’s weakest. Corporations and unions are allowed to contribute to candidates, which is one reason the recent, controversial Citizens United v. F.E.C. U.S. Supreme Court decision has no impact on state races in Vermont (though one day it could affect elections for the U.S. Senate or House).

None of this means that there is a lot of campaign money hanky-panky going on in Vermont. In fact, one reason the laws are relatively mild is that, historically, nothing harsher seemed necessary.

“In Vermont, there’s so little corruption and there’s so little money, there’s been no need for tougher laws,” said Kevin Ellis, who has been following Vermont politics for years as both a reporter and now one of Montpelier’s most influential lobbyists.

Not everyone agrees with Ellis’ assessment.

Vermont’s lax requirements allow contributors to hide

“I don’t buy that argument,” said Gayle Zatz of Vermont’s chapter of Common Cause. “Things happen here. They happen on a smaller scale than in New York or California, but they definitely happen. Because they’re smaller, we don’t know about them.”

She could be right, but so vague an argument is unlikely to persuade many voters. One of Zatz’s colleagues, who did not want to be identified, pointed to the close connection between the Douglas administration and Entergy, the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

“If we delved into Entergy’s contributions,” she said, “we might find out why” the administration supports relicensing the plant.

And what was the extent of Entergy’s contribution to Douglas’ campaign? According to researchers at the National Institute on Money in State Politics, it was zero.

At least as far as we know.

But there’s a lot we don’t know because Vermont’s campaign finance laws are so weak. Unlike most states, Vermont does not require contributors to list their employers or their professions. So unless someone can get a list of the names of all officials and employees of Entergy (or any other company or interest group) it’s all but impossible to know how much that company and its supporters contributed to a candidate.

Out at the Helena, Mont., headquarters of the National Institute (or its easier to remember nickname “followthemoney.org”) researchers try to subvert Vermont’s lack of transparency.

“I look for patterns,” said Anne Bauer, the researcher who handles Vermont. “I look for multiple contributions from certain towns or addresses. I might Google a name to see if I can find a connection. It’s good old-fashioned research.”

But in the case of Vermont, she can find only a little more than half of the employers or professions of the contributors.

In addition, she said, there are many ways to hide the real source of contributions. A company can urge its workers to contribute to a political party, which in turn can make unlimited contributions to Vermont candidates. Republican Party committees were Douglas’s biggest donors, contributing about 18 percent of his campaign funds.

None of this means that Vermont is a sinkhole of political corruption. Kevin Ellis was right. There is “so little money” in Vermont politics relative to, say, national politics, that the potential conflicts of interest involved are not nearly comparable.

Members of Congress need (or think they do) millions for their re-election campaigns, and are constantly raising money. Much of that money is raised by lobbyists who host fund-raising receptions, arrange direct mail contribution drives, or arrange for their clients to do the same. When that lobbyist visits a congressional office, then, it is often the lobbyist who is the dominant party, the member of Congress who is the supplicant, ready to do the bidding of the lobbying firm and its clients.

It doesn’t work that way in Vermont. To begin with, few Vermont legislators have offices for lobbyists to visit. More important, running for the Legislature in Montpelier is cheap. With the exception of Chittenden County senate races, legislative campaigns in Vermont are likely to cost between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars. With a little help from the family and close friends, many a lawmaker can finance his or her own campaign, meaning the legislator is not beholden to the lobbyist seeking support for a pet issue.

Running for governor an exception to the rule

There is, though, one exception to the state’s low-budget politics: the governor. Running for governor, even in Vermont, has gotten expensive. The candidates need money, meaning they are tempted to take it from anywhere they can get it. Jim Douglas spent more than $1.2 million getting re-elected in 2008. Already this year, a Dubie campaign aid boasted that the lieutenant governor’s campaign has raised $800,000. If true, Dubie is on track to spend perhaps $2 million before the election.

In last year’s filings, Democratic Secretary of State Deb Markowitz had raised more than $190,000 for her campaign for governor. Her campaign manager, Paul Tencher, said the campaign would cost at least “several hundred thousand dollars” up to the Aug. 24 primary. With all the Democrats likely to raise at least a few hundred thousand dollars, total spending for the 2010 campaign will probably top $3 million, and while the winner won’t necessarily by the one who raised the most money, he or she will have raised a lot, and will owe something to his or her fund raisers.

The traditional political response is that, in the words of former Gov. Howard Dean, “Money gets you access; it doesn’t get you the decision.”

When it comes to politics and governing, though, access is worth a lot. No doubt the contributors think it is worth what they pay. The traditional political response to pleas for tighter campaign financing laws is that transparency is all the public needs. Possibly true, but real transparency is not, right now, what the public gets.