EDITORIAL
Now, an opportunity for campaign reform

The Senate got off to a bad start on campaign finance reform this session when it appeared to favor a pair of bills that would have crippled independent oversight of lawmakers' fund-raising practices.

The immediate public outcry was such that the bills were quickly buried and their proponents, we hope, appropriately chastened.

Without dwelling on that misstep, we'd suggest that the Legislature now enjoys a great opportunity to revive some promising campaign finance reform legislation that foundered last year.

That legislation changed repeatedly during the session as lawmakers wrangled over how strict and comprehensive new restrictions should be on special-interest money. The struggle highlighted a deepening rift between the House and Senate leaders.

House Democrats had approved a bill that boldly banned campaign contributions from government contractors, corporations and labor unions.

Senate leaders responded with a badly flawed bill that House members, holding their noses, sent back to committee as the session ended.

This year, lawmakers are trying to decide whether to resurrect the Senate version carried over from last session, or start over.

Start over. At a minimum, campaign finance reform legislation must ban contributions from government contractors to anyone who remotely influences the awarding of those contracts. And that includes lawmakers.

It won't do to have the sort of end-runs we saw proposed last year, such as allowing unlimited contributions to political action committees, or allowing anyone who owns less than 25 percent of a contracting firm to contribute.

Lawmakers should also prohibit themselves from making donations to community groups out of their campaign treasury. Citizens contribute in the hopes that the money will be used for campaigning, not to curry favor with district constituents.

It's an unfair advantage to incumbents, who hardly need more advantages. And it seems to present the opportunity to some to give undue amounts of campaign cash to community groups in exchange for their support.

We don't want to spend the next decade patching up ineffective campaign finance reform legislation. Let's clean up the shortcomings we saw last year and pass a bill that will truly deter influence-peddling.