Rauf Bolden: Understanding campaign finance laws and looking for additional financial disclosures
Campaign finance is a fluid topic, cascading down from the Oval Office to the smallest hamlet, affecting every facet of political life. Alabama’s Fair Campaign Practices Act (FCPA) is our guiding light. Financial disclosures are mandatory. In 2018, when Orange Beach Councilman Jeff Boyd ran for the Alabama State Senate, and Councilman Jerry Johnson ran for Baldwin County Commissioner they filed reports with the Alabama Secretary of State’s Office. Unfortunately, both campaigns flamed out in the Republican Primary. Still they raised significant amounts of money through small donors, according to the search results, but Alabama has different rules for corporate contributions. “22 states completely prohibit corporations from contributing to political campaigns. Another six-Alabama, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia-allow corporations to contribute an unlimited amount of money to state campaigns,” according to a report on the National Conference of State Legislators website. “As of May 2015, individuals, corporations, and unions in Alabama could make unlimited contributions to [municipal] candidates, PACs [political action committee that basically collects campaign contributions], party committees, legislative caucus committees, and ballot measure campaigns. Super PACs [independent-expenditure only committees] could not make direct contributions to the aforementioned individuals and groups,” according to a report on Ballotopedia What rules govern campaign finance in my hometown of Orange Beach and other municipalities throughout the state? “Candidates for municipal office are required to file disclosure reports in the same manner as state and county candidates. But, municipal candidates must file with the judge of probate in their county instead of filing electronically with the Secretary of State,” said Clay Helms, Director of Elections, Alabama Secretary of State’s Office in an email. I reached out to the Judge of Probate’s Office in Baldwin County for comment, but received a reference instead. “You should be able to go on the Probate website and…all the [municipal candidate] reports should come up,” said Violetta Smith, Election Manager for Baldwin County Probate in an email. To improve transparency there is more that should be considered. Take for instance, there is no law insisting candidates release their tax returns in the Alabama Fair Campaign Practices Act. I argue tax returns help provide openness, essentially guarding against conflicts of interest in a small town like Orange Beach. Basically, we see all the rules for campaign finance disclosure are consistent across the state, requiring all candidates for public office to explain where the funds are coming from except when dealing with out-of-state monies. These are exempt from the local rules, “The Secretary of State’s website says that federal PACs [Political Action Committees] aren’t subject to Alabama law.” according to a report on al.com. Running for public office requires research. Information regarding candidate filing requirements can be obtained from the Alabama Secretary of State’s office. Fundraising is a political art form. “Create a host committee of well-connected and enthusiastic individuals who are willing to promote your events [fundraisers] in the community,” according to a report on NGPVAN. In 2018, Orange Beach Councilman Jeff Boyd ran against Baldwin County Commissioner Chris Elliot for the same seat in the Alabama State Senate. Elliot raised seven times more money than Boyd. Guess who won? In politics, money matters. Money and politics did not always share the same bed. “The idea of candidates asking for contributions to fund their campaigns was completely foreign to George Washington. George and friends [the founders] probably would have been averse to political ads, directly soliciting donations from constituents, or accepting large sums of money from business PACs,” according to a report on OpenSecrets. Still this is the world we live in, especially in the mega-donor era. Digital campaigns, data analysis and constant polling, interpreting the results and re-polling are very expensive. The fundraising arm should be any candidate’s most important operational focus. I encourage qualified candidates to consider running, putting their names into the hat. In Orange Beach, the jobs of Mayor and City Councilman do not pay much, purposely set low, discouraging competition at the ballot box. The upside is council members have immense power over local decisions like what gets built where, building codes, flood-zone regulations, developing municipal real estate, spending grant monies from the BP Oil Spill, and employee benefits. The candidate’s reasons for running are ideally the desire to make a difference. To win organizing an efficient fundraising apparatus is essential, emulating the example of Chris Elliot, winning a seat in the Alabama State Senate. Campaign finance disclosure is important, unmasking the underlying financial machinery is critical to understanding what’s happening behind the scenes. I argue for having each municipal candidate in Orange Beach and around the state release their tax returns as a vehicle for clarity, being as informative to voters as having them release the results of their drug tests. Rauf Bolden is retired IT Director at the City of Orange Beach, working as an IT & Web Consultant on the Beach Road, building apps with embedded cameras, streaming live from the clients’ networks. He can be reached b
Daniel Sutter: Vaccines, reason, and freedom. Should vaccinations be mandated?
The current measles outbreak has brought new criticism of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children over vaccine safety concerns. Measles was declared to be eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, and yet this year 550 cases have occurred through the second week of April. Anti-vaccination attitudes, I think, reflect a decline in trust in government. The research “anti-vaxxers” cite linking vaccines to autism, multiple sclerosis, and other ailments, has been called “junk science.” The Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration have pronounced vaccines safe. Physicians promoting the “danger” have faced professional censure. Despite this, I do not see the safety of vaccines as allowing us to dismiss the anti-vaccination position. In a free nation, the government serves the people, not the other way around. Freedom means making decisions for ourselves based on our values, beliefs, and assessment of risks. We do not have to justify our decisions to others, even experts. If so, then why should those of us who believe that vaccines are safe force our assessment on others? Parental rights differ from personal rights, as parents make decisions for their children. We recognize that parents who neglect or abuse their children should lose (at least temporarily) their parental rights. Parents should be afforded freedom to raise and protect their children as they see fit unless they abuse these rights. Hard cases arise when parents choose faith healing and prayer over effective medical treatments. The dilemma stems from a conflict between personal and parental rights: the child hypothetically could wish to receive medical treatment. Respecting the child’s rights might require restricting parental choice. Can we justify mandatory vaccination similarly? Several required vaccinations are for generally non-life-threatening illnesses like chickenpox, mumps, and even measles. People feared and dreaded polio before Dr. Salk’s vaccine; chickenpox was a two week vacation from school. Preventing a brief absence from school is not grounds for trumping parental rights. Immunization, of course, protects others besides the vaccinated. Economists call this a spillover or external benefit, which people may well ignore in vaccination decisions. An important spillover here is protecting persons with compromised immune systems who cannot be safely vaccinated. Many economists believe that external benefits justify government mandates. I disagree, because the person immunized still benefits the most. If the person getting immunized (or the parent) believes that the cost exceeds the benefit, a small spillover benefit is unlikely to alter the balance. Nobel prize-winning economist James Buchanan offered a better way to think about such cases. Politics, Buchanan contended, is an exchange constraints on ourselves: I agree to vaccinate my son in exchange for other parents vaccinating their children. A similar argument applies to taxes – I agree to pay taxes because you will be made to pay. We will never all agree on any decision of significance. Government though involves the exchange of numerous constraints, and we may benefit from the package as a whole. For instance, all states require vaccination against eight viruses for school children. We might disagree with one or two of the requirements and still abide by the mandate. Whether government constraints benefit us depends on whether we trust that politicians act in our best interest. Differences in state vaccination requirements highlight this tension. All states require vaccination against eight illnesses, typically through four shots. Beyond this, forty three and thirteen states require immunization for Hepatitis B and Hepatitis A respectively. Connecticut requires nine shots; Alabama requires only four. If immunizations reflect a clear public health consensus, why do state requirements differ? Politics and not just public health influences requirements. Debate over the relatively new HPV vaccine, which can prevent cervical cancer, reveals this. Two states and the District of Columbia require the vaccine, which costs over $200, and makers Merck and GlaxoSmithKline have lobbied lawmakers in other states for mandates. Political considerations and campaign contributions shape vaccine mandates. Can we really trust that our politicians impose mandates on us based exclusively on our interests and sentiments? Unfortunately not. One consequence of this lack of trust is anti-vaccination skepticism. Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and host of Econversations on TrojanVision. The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Troy University.
Alabama among GOP states who discovered a tax hike they like
After passing waves of tax cuts in recent years, some lawmakers in several Republican-dominated states have decided it’s time to make a big exception and are pushing for tax increases to fix roads that are crumbling from years of neglect. In the past month alone, the Republican governors of Ohio, Alabama and Arkansas have signed fuel tax hikes. Meanwhile, proposed increases are being considered by three legislatures that are fully or partly GOP-controlled, including a whopping 45-cents-a-gallon hike in Michigan. The moves show a growing willingness in conservative places to take on the fearsome politics of higher taxes, at least for infrastructure. Republicans who otherwise support lower taxes are acknowledging that cutting government spending elsewhere in the budget won’t cover the cost of repairing the many miles of potholed roads and creaky bridges. “It’s going to take $2.5 billion a year,” said Detroit Regional Chamber CEO Sandy Baruah of Michigan’s road-building needs. “Anyone who thinks you can cut even half of that out of other elements of the state budget without having significant ramifications to real people, you’re smoking something that’s not legal.” Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won election last year after running on the slogan “Fix the Damn Roads.” Her plan would gradually add 45 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas by October 2020, which would be more than double the current 26-cents-per-gallon gas tax and make it the highest in the country. GOP legislative leaders have dismissed the proposed hike as way too much, but they are leaving open the prospect of passing a more modest increase in the face of intense pressure from the business community. In some states, Republican-leaning interests have become the biggest backers of higher taxes for this purpose, which is seen as necessary for economic development. While consumers are acutely conscious of prices at the pump, legislators are struggling to get around the difficult realities of the fuel surcharge that funds transportation projects. They are also facing the echoes of the tax cut promises they made in winning over many heartland states in the last decade — that getting tougher on spending wouldn’t mean worse services. In most states, the excise tax rate per gallon is fixed and doesn’t rise with inflation. And the federal gas tax has remained unchanged since 1993. Meanwhile, consumers are driving more fuel-efficient vehicles or are driving less, depressing revenue. The real purchasing power of the federal gas tax has fallen by 40% over the past quarter-century, and repair costs rise significantly when roads decline to a rating of poor or worse. This winter, Michigan’s Department of Transportation had to close 10 miles of Interstate 75 in suburban Detroit — one of the state’s most heavily trafficked stretches — because of vehicle damage from cracks and potholes. In Ohio, new Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who attacked his opponent in the 2018 campaign as a tax-friendly Democrat, this month signed off on a 10.5-cent gas tax increase and a 19-cent diesel tax hike. Republican Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas last month signed increases that were their states’ first in decades, of 10 cents and 3 cents respectively. And the GOP-led General Assembly in Virginia this month voted to add 7 cents a gallon in some parts of the state, which was a win for Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. Fuel tax increases also are under consideration in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where power is divided between the parties. The state plans pay little heed to President Donald Trump‘s latest proposal for $200 billion in federal infrastructure spending. An earlier plan died in Congress and was heavily dependent on state and local funding, though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump talked this month about working together on an infrastructure package. In Michigan, the roads have become a state joke. Contests are held to find the worst pothole. An ice cream made by a Shelby Township company is called the “Michigan Pot Hole.” A 12-year-old Muskegon Heights boy recently attracted attention on local TV and social media for filling the ankle-deep pits on his street with dirt. Three years ago, the Republican-led Legislature approved a $1.2 billion road plan that raised fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, and was heavily dependent on shifting income tax revenue from an account that covers health care, higher education and other funding areas. But the effect was limited and Whitmer warns that without additional investment, the percentage of state-owned highways that are rated poor will double in five years, to 44%. Local streets are worse. In recent years, Michigan’s Republican leadership has focused on cutting business taxes and expanding income tax credits. “This is 40 years of disinvestment in the state of Michigan, and it’s coming due now,” Whitmer said of the roads. At a recent GOP meeting in Grand Rapids, Republican state Rep. Lynn Afendoulis said many of her colleagues first want to look into redirecting other state spending to roads and to see the 2015 laws fully implemented. A number of Republicans hope to dedicate Michigan’s sales tax on motor fuel to the transportation budget, but they have not detailed how that would be done without slicing funding for schools and municipalities. “I think there are people who are willing to talk about some sort of small tax, perhaps if we couldn’t find enough money elsewhere,” Afendoulis said. Whitmer’s plan would cost the average motorist $276 a year. She has proposed offsetting that burden with targeted income tax relief for retirees and low-income workers. Conservative Arkansas saw no alternative to higher taxes. The measure for adding another 3 cents per gallon for gas and 6 cents for diesel passed the Legislature by an overwhelming margin. “That shows the level of need and the level of support,” said Arkansas’ governor, Hutchinson. The law also will tap into expected revenue from casinos and imposes an additional registration fee on electric and hybrid vehicles. Ohio’s DeWine said the states can’t wait for the federal government to solve their
