Here is an article from Harry Pozycki ,Citizens' Campaign Founder on the recent Supreme Court ruling on campaign financing and how how NJ's pay-to-play legislation remains on solid ground in his opinion after that ruling. I felt this was a worthy article to post given the efforts of play to play that have happened already in Hoboken.
N.J.'s pay-to-play reforms on solid ground after Supreme Court's campaign finance ruling
January 26th, 2010
The sweeping U.S. Supreme Court decision last week on campaign spending raised concerns among some observers about whether New Jersey's pay-to-play reform laws would now be more open to constitutional challenge. If anything, the opposite is the case.
First, it is important to understand what the court did and did not do in its 5-4 decision. It did strike down existing restrictions on corporations independently spending money on efforts to influence elections. That includes television ads and direct mail pieces done without coordination with a candidate's campaign. In federal races, a corporation previously would have needed to form a Political Action Committee and solicit money from its employees to conduct this kind of effort. Now, corporations will be able to spend directly from their corporate treasuries and presumably unions will be able to follow suit.
The court also overturned the ban on television advertising by corporations and unions to influence the election of a particular candidate, by name, 30 days before a presidential primary and 60 days before a general election. This was a component of the 2002 McCain-Feingold law.
The court left in place the federal prohibition on corporations directly contributing to candidates, as well as existing contribution limits. It also spelled out that disclosure of corporate spending can be required.
The importance of upholding disclosure of corporate campaign spending was the subject of an amicus brief submitted by Gary Stein, the chair of the Citizens' Campaign Legal Task Force and a former New Jersey Supreme Court Justice. We at the Citizens' Campaign were pleased that the court by an 8-1 margin agreed with Justice Stein's argument.
While this ruling certainly will make it easier for corporations and unions to spend more freely on elections, it does not impact our state or local pay-to-play laws. These laws are not sweeping campaign-finance restrictions; they are narrowly tailored public contracting regulations designed to curtail actual or perceived corruption in the award of state and local government contracts.
Both federal and state courts have repeatedly affirmed the rights of the federal, state and local governments to limit contributions by those seeking or performing government contracts.
This new court decision leaves pay-to-play laws standing - and may expand their adoption at all levels of government as an effective and constitutionally sound way to ensure that merit, integrity and cost-effectiveness are restored to all government contracting.
As Craig Holman, a national expert on pay-to-play legislation, puts it, "Citizens United does not impact New Jersey's pay-to-play laws. In fact, the decision may bolster pay-to-play laws as a possible response to unlimited corporate spending in elections." ◦
