The House yesterday voted 58–11 for House Bill 1055, a seemingly harmless little bill from the Secretary of State that changes the timeframe for terminating a campaign committee that fails to timely file a campaign finance report from 30 days after it receives a penalty order to 35 days after the Secretary of State issues the order.
Campaign finance is about transparency. South Dakota’s relatively lax campaign finance laws provide voters with some minimal, hard-to-access information about who’s paying to elect or defeat the candidates and measures on our ballot. Campaigns that fail to provide that information are breaking the law and the public trust. They are also failing basic office management: for 97% of South Dakota campaign committees, tracking and reporting contributions and expenses to the Secretary of State is less complicated than filing the 1040 with the IRS. Campaigns that can’t fulfill the basic duty of reporting their activities to the public deserve a swift and severe whacking.
Yet during committee hearing last week, some lawmakers (each of whom is involved with at least one campaign committee and thus should understand that duty and the process for fulfilling it) fretted that we might be holding campaign committees too accountable:
Representative Ryan Cwach, a Yankton Democrat, said he sympathized with the Secretary of State office. But Cwach said the legislation could allow a political action committee to be terminated without knowing it faced that possibility.
“We do not know the circumstances. We shouldn’t pre-judge it on the floor,” Cwach said. “If we’re going to be drafting laws, we should draft them well.”
Three Republican House members — David Anderson of Hudson, Nancy Rasmussen of Hurley and Nancy York of Watertown — urged caution too.
Anderson said there could have been a mismailing or some other problem that prevented the notice from being delivered. “Perhaps there is a chance to fix the problem, without creating another problem,” he said.
York had joined Cwach and Kelly Sullivan, a Sioux Falls Democrat, in voting against endorsing the bill in committee.
“Vote this one down, and let us meet with the Secretary of State, so it’s a good bill,” York said Thursday [Bob Mercer, “S.D. House Seeks Solution if PACs Don’t Respond,” KELO-TV 2020.01.23].
Um… mismailing? I’ve worked with multiple campaign committees, and I’ve never seen mismailing derail any communication, coming from or going to the Secretary of State’s office. Every campaign committee files a mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address, so when the Secretary issues a penalty (and the order goes out by certified mail), it’s pretty easy to light up all three points of contact to alert the committee that it’s in hot water and had better respond. People entering the campaign finance realm have an obligation to update the Secretary of State on their contact information, check their post office boxes and e-mails, and for Pete’s sake know the law and file their papers on time! Every campaign committee has the campaign finance reporting deadlines; if a committee fails to report on time, the Secretary should be able to nuke that lawbreaker after a month’s grace period, whether or not the committee gets a letter.
Yet the chamberful of campaign committee managers gave themselves more time to break campaign finance law. Representative Anderson moved to amend another portion of the statute to double the time they get to appeal any civil penalty order from 30 to 60 days, and the House approved that change, giving delinquent committees more time to make excuses. Don’t be dumb, committees: instead of dragging your feet and then appealing your penalties to the Office of Hearing Examiners, just do the much easier work of filing your reports for the public on time.
Even with that change weakening the current law, HB 1055 drew eleven nays, from nine Democrats and two Republicans.
South Dakota’s campaign finance laws are already pretty slack. If you can’t follow those simple laws and meet those clear deadlines, you shouldn’t be throwing money into politics. Stick to your guns, Secretary Barnett, and help South Dakotans get more information about who’s buying their votes.
p.s.: I’ve filed my year-end report; so should you! Deadline is tomorrow, Friday, January 31! As of 06:20 CST, neither of the committees who have successfully placed marijuana measures on the 2020 ballot have filed their year-end reports