Legal challenge to commonsense law threatens the integrity of local elected officials’ decision-making process.
These California examples highlight the need to stop the pay-to-play ethos that plagues too many elected local government officials. It’s why state senators Steve Glazer, a Democrat from Orinda, and Scott Wilk, a Republican from Lancaster, teamed up last year to author legislation, Senate Bill 1439, that prohibits local elected officials from accepting campaign contributions of $250 or more from parties who have business before them.
The plaintiffs include two elected officials from Sacramento County who don’t want the campaign funding spigot tightened and trade associations representing restaurant owners, retailers and builders, the very sorts of groups that like to flash their money around to influence local government decisions.
The lawsuit makes two arguments. First, it claims that this was an overreach of California lawmakers’ authority to amend the state’s Political Reform Act, passed by voters in 1974. The act prohibited all government officials in California, including local elected lawmakers, from voting on matters in which they had a personal financial interest.
Second, opponents argue that the bill violates the federal free speech rights of interest groups. Here the legal debate drifts into the murky waters of where the legal line can be drawn between advocacy and financial candidate support protected under the U.S. Constitution, on one hand, and the legitimate need to stop political corruption on the other.
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