11/14/07:Do Donors Still Pay To Play?-Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
Do Donors Still Pay To Play?
The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: A8
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has come up with an especially telling - and especially troubling - illustration of the primary explanation for the endorsement by the state Senate of a rewrite of cable television regulations that harms consumers and communities while benefitting out-of-state telecommunications corporations.
The 23 senators who voted in favor of the legislation accepted a total of $1.2 million in campaign contributions from special interests that support the proposal, according to the Democracy Campaign.
In contrast, the nine senators who opposed the bill had accepted less than $100,000 in total contributions from the special interests.
Reduced to raw numbers: The average senator who supported the controversial measure - which was crafted to benefit its chief proponent, AT&T - collected $52,297 from interests associated with AT&T and its allies.
The average senator who opposed the bill had contributions from the same interests of around $11,000.
According to the WDC study, AT&T gave 28 times more campaign money to the 23 senators who backed the bill and to party leadership committees associated with them than to the opponents.
Many of the largest contributions went to Republicans such as Milwaukee County's Alberta Darling, and members of the GOP caucus voted in lock step for the measure.
But the Senate is controlled by Democrats, who had stalled the progress of the bill until former Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, was replaced by Russ Decker, a more pliable senator from the Wausau area.
Decker's campaign committee was enriched to the tune of $23,641 in special-interest contributions from interests backing the cable bill, while the state Senate Democratic Committee with which Decker works cleared more than $100,000 - as did its Republican equivalent.
A remarkable $49,955 went to state Sen. Jeff Plale, the Milwaukee County Democrat who is a prime proponent of the cable bill and who battled to block amendments that would have made the measure more consumer-friendly.
Politicians always claim that patterns of contributions and votes are mere coincidences.
But these patterns are too consistent to be dismissed as mere coincidence.
Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, who has traditionally been afforded the ultimate authority for policing wrongdoing in the Capitol, should take a serious look at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign's findings. And he should not hesitate to begin asking the necessary questions - as should investigators with the new state Government Accountability Board, which needs to prove that it is more than just a paper tiger creation of legislators who want to foster the illusion that they operate under the scrutiny of a watchdog.
Despite the high-profile prosecutions of legislators involved in the caucus scandals, reasonable Wisconsinites will be excused for looking at the contribution figures and the votes on the cable television bill and wondering whether anything has changed in the Capitol. And if the answer is that Wisconsin still has pay-to-play government, then a new round of prosecutions may well be in order.
The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: A8
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has come up with an especially telling - and especially troubling - illustration of the primary explanation for the endorsement by the state Senate of a rewrite of cable television regulations that harms consumers and communities while benefitting out-of-state telecommunications corporations.
The 23 senators who voted in favor of the legislation accepted a total of $1.2 million in campaign contributions from special interests that support the proposal, according to the Democracy Campaign.
In contrast, the nine senators who opposed the bill had accepted less than $100,000 in total contributions from the special interests.
Reduced to raw numbers: The average senator who supported the controversial measure - which was crafted to benefit its chief proponent, AT&T - collected $52,297 from interests associated with AT&T and its allies.
The average senator who opposed the bill had contributions from the same interests of around $11,000.
According to the WDC study, AT&T gave 28 times more campaign money to the 23 senators who backed the bill and to party leadership committees associated with them than to the opponents.
Many of the largest contributions went to Republicans such as Milwaukee County's Alberta Darling, and members of the GOP caucus voted in lock step for the measure.
But the Senate is controlled by Democrats, who had stalled the progress of the bill until former Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, was replaced by Russ Decker, a more pliable senator from the Wausau area.
Decker's campaign committee was enriched to the tune of $23,641 in special-interest contributions from interests backing the cable bill, while the state Senate Democratic Committee with which Decker works cleared more than $100,000 - as did its Republican equivalent.
A remarkable $49,955 went to state Sen. Jeff Plale, the Milwaukee County Democrat who is a prime proponent of the cable bill and who battled to block amendments that would have made the measure more consumer-friendly.
Politicians always claim that patterns of contributions and votes are mere coincidences.
But these patterns are too consistent to be dismissed as mere coincidence.
Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, who has traditionally been afforded the ultimate authority for policing wrongdoing in the Capitol, should take a serious look at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign's findings. And he should not hesitate to begin asking the necessary questions - as should investigators with the new state Government Accountability Board, which needs to prove that it is more than just a paper tiger creation of legislators who want to foster the illusion that they operate under the scrutiny of a watchdog.
Despite the high-profile prosecutions of legislators involved in the caucus scandals, reasonable Wisconsinites will be excused for looking at the contribution figures and the votes on the cable television bill and wondering whether anything has changed in the Capitol. And if the answer is that Wisconsin still has pay-to-play government, then a new round of prosecutions may well be in order.
Submitted by wnpj on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 1:54pm.