COMMENTARY
Why not let public finance elections?
By Kory Payne
The Legislature gives monies to some private, nonprofit organizations through the grants-in-aid program. The process of deciding which organizations get funded, and how much they receive, is done in private, behind closed doors. There's no transparency in this process, and legislators, nonprofit groups and the general public are stuck in this secrecy.
Thanks to some investigative reporting by The Advertiser, the issue of how grants-in-aid should be allotted is now being debated, and it appears that the problems with the program will even get fixed in the upcoming legislative session.
What worries me more than this single issue, though, is the pattern that it adheres to: problems associated with campaign finance. This has happened before. Special interest needs something; legislators have power to grant it; special interest gives legislators money to get that something. We've seen this scenario with other issues and it has created a pattern that deserves some problem-solving attention itself.
Whether it's a conflict of interest case involving state tax credits, illegal use of campaign funds, or outright bribery, problems like these that involve special interests giving money to legislators for something in return is a problem in and of itself. Simply fixing the grants-in-aid process won't prevent future problems of its kind.
While I could remind readers of examples from the past, I'd rather focus on a solution that could solve them all.
Publicly financed elections, while not a new idea, are gaining attention nationwide as states across the country enact programs to help solve the problem of money in politics. Here in Hawai'i, voters and organizations from Hilo to Hanalei embrace the idea as well.
Hawai'i currently has a partial public election campaign funding system, paid for by a $2 check-off on state income tax forms, but the program has almost become obsolete. In the 2006 elections, only 21 candidates chose to use the program, and of those only three candidates won, all of them incumbents.
Elections have become so expensive that partial public funds don't give candidates a competitive amount of money. A serious upgrade of this public funding system is long overdue. We need to turn our partial funding system into a full public funding system.
By upgrading our partial funding system, we would give candidates the choice to run their campaigns the traditional way— by raising private money, most of it from special interests — or run by qualifying as publicly financed candidates. Creating this choice for candidates also creates more choices for voters. It will also help prevent problems like the pay-to-play issue with the grants-in-aid process.
In states that have a full public funding option, more candidates are running for office and the ties to special interest money are being cut dramatically. By going into neighborhoods in their districts and collecting a set number of signatures, accompanied by $5 contributions, candidates in these states are qualifying to receive full public funds.
This community-based, grassroots approach to campaigning cuts out special interests and increases voter participation. Here are some of the results of public funding programs from other states:
We could use that type of solution here in Hawai'i, where the real estate industry leads all other contributors to campaigns in the 2006 election cycle. While upgrading the partial public funding system won't solve all of our problems at once, it would immediately address the ties between money and politics.
Currently, most legislators spend a large percentage of their time raising money, even during the legislative session when important decisions are being made on various bills. Candidates who receive full public funding do not have to raise special interest money on the taxpayer's dime.
Instead, they spend that time with people in their community, finding out about problems and figuring out ways to solve them.
If House Speaker Calvin Say and Senate President Colleen Hanabusa are looking for a solution to the problem with the grants-in-aid system, they should also dig a little deeper to solve the bigger problem of money and politics.
By upgrading and modernizing our public funding system, they will be able to increase voter turnout, reinvigorate elections, build the public trust and help prevent the next problem that's sure to come along involving special interest money and policymaking.
Kory Payne is a community organizer for Voter Owned Hawai'i, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.
