New Campaign Finance Laws for Fall Elections
07/09/2010
Official photograph
New campaign finance regulations allowed to become law this week by Gov. Linda Lingle should make it easier for the public to follow the race for something almost as important as votes in politics — money.
The 107-page measure, known as Act 211 or House Bill 2003, rewrites the campaign finance laws to make them easier to understand. But the bill also introduces a handful of new changes that bolster transparency of corporate donations, allow a greater percentage of out-of-state contributions, and increase the amount of donations that candidates can make to community organizations.
"The intent of the recodification was a technical cleanup, just because it hasn't occurred since (the law) was first written in 1973," said Barbara Wong, executive director of the State of Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission. "It's something we saw that needed to be done for everybody — the public's sake, the candidates' sake and for our sake."
But lawmakers also took the opportunity to make some substantive changes.
"Ninety-five to 98 percent of the bill is really nonsubstantive in terms of changes," said House Majority Leader Blake Oshiro, a member of the House Judiciary Committee that worked on the measure. "But there are a few minor changes in the law."
One controversial issue that did not make it into the bill was a potential cap on corporate donations. Some advocated for a complete ban on corporate support or a very low limit. Lawmakers, however, were not able to come to an agreement.
"Now (the donations) are more transparent, but the bill did not attempt to grapple with the issue of limited corporate contributions," Oshiro said. "At the end of the day, through several iterations, we tried to come up with a compromise but couldn't come up with a one. So that issue was not addressed."
