Senate Introduces Comptroller’s Campaign Finance Bill

Last Friday, the Senate Rules Committee introduced S.4239, the Comptroller Campaign Finance Reform Act.  This bill, submitted by the Comptroller’s Office, would put in place an option system of public financing, but only for state Comptroller campaigns.

In order to receive public financing, candidates would have to agree to: a campaign spending cap; lower campaign contribution limits; participate in at least one public debate; and monitoring and auditing of campaign expenditures by an independent campaign finance board within the board of elections.

The last part of the bill is worth looking at a bit more closely.

The bill would establish a seven-member Campaign Finance Fund Board (CFFB) within the State Board of Elections, which would be responsible for monitoring the program, conducting audits of spending by participating candidates and taking action where they find a violation of the law.   The proposal would give the CFFB the authority to impose civil fines (after notice and a hearing) of up to $10,000, and establishes criminal offenses that would be prosecuted by the state Attorney General.

The Assembly passed this bill in 2011 (and it died on the Assembly’s 3^rd Reading calendar in 2012), but the bill has never been introduced in the Senate before.  (Read my 2011 post on the bill here.) Earlier this year, the Assembly introduced a broader optional public financing bill, which has not been acted upon as of this writing. (Read my prior post on that bill here.)

Perhaps this is an indication that the Senate is warming up to a campaign finance reform proposal that includes an optional public financing component.