The Mississippi Legislature surprised us. Just when it looked as if significant campaign finance reform was unlikely, some lawmakers got the message that the currently lax approach toward campaign spending is corrupting not only their body but also statewide offices.
On Tuesday’s deadline day for action, the Senate Elections Committee passed an amended bill that would ban elected officials and candidates from using campaign money for personal expenses and stop them from pocketing whatever’s left in their campaign fund when they retire.
The much-needed changes would be added to another proposal, also still alive, to require candidates to provide an itemized breakdown of charges to their campaign credit cards, rather than hiding what they are doing by just reporting lump sums, as many of the highest officials in the state have been doing.
All of this activity comes in response to some extensive reporting – initially by The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson and followed up by The Associated Press and other media outlets – that has detailed how widespread the personal use of campaign funds has become. Elected officials have used the donations to pay for clothes, dry cleaning, groceries, golf outings, apartments and out-of-state junkets. They have racked up huge expenses to their campaign funds in non-election years. They have reimbursed themselves for thousands of dollars of supposed campaign expenses with no documentation that they actually spent any money of their own. They have, at retirement, cashed out what’s left in their account, with one former officeholder, Amy Tuck, pocketing more than a quarter of a million dollars alone.
In effect, many public officials – either in state office or at the Legislature – have been using their campaign funds to supplement their income, enhance their lifestyle and cushion their retirement or career change. That is not what donors intended, or if it is what they intended, it’s because they intended to buy off the politicians in a way that would not land anyone in prison.
Mississippi is only one of five states that reportedly allow what has been rightly called “legalized bribery.” For a state that ranks high on the corruption meter, that’s not surprising, but it needs to end.
Getting a bill out of committee to curb the worst campaign finance abuses is a good step, but it’s only a step. There is a long way to go, and only a short time to make it happen, before lawmakers adjourn and the momentum for cleaning up the campaign finance laws is lost.
