Clean Election Update

March 3, 2006

Clean Elections Dead Again

The WV Public Campaign Financing Act (SB124) has suffered another inglorious death in the Senate Finance Committee, in spite of all the diligent lobby work by Julie Archer and Si Galperin.

The bill was on the committee’s agenda last week so members could hear testimony from Todd Lang, the executive director of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission in Arizona, one of the nation’s pioneering Clean Elections states. However, there was no discussion of the West Virginia legislation by the committee, and the bill was not put to a vote.

The bill’s major stumbling block is Finance Committee chairman Walt Helmick, who opposes public financing of election campaigns. By all the counts we can come up with, there are at least 10 votes in favor of our bill on the committee, more than enough for passage.

Will another study resolution help this bill? Who knows.