Legislative Panel Considers a Trio of Bills That Could Reform Maine’s Campaign Finance Laws

Lawmakers in Augusta heard arguments on Monday for and against a series of bills that would reform Maine’s campaign finance laws as well as potentially alter and expand the taxpayer funded Maine Clean Elections Act (MCEA) program.

The legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee (VLA) held public hearings to consider LD 9, An Act Regarding Campaign Finance Disclosure, which would change a variety of campaign finance rules, along with two bills changing the MCEA.

LD 9, submitted by the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices and presented by Sen. Craig Hickman (D-Kennebec), tightens various finance rules, requires increased disclosure in some cases, and increases penalties for fraud.

Ethics Commission Executive Director Jonathan Wayne presented the bill to the committee in Sen. Hickman’s stead, although he addressed only a few of the 13-page bill’s many proposed changes.

Among these, the bill would increase penalties for anyone making “straw donations,” in which the actual donor passes their funds through a third party, who then goes on record as giving the money to a campaign in order to conceal the true source of the contribution.

The rule change would impose a fine of five times the donation amount on anyone making “straw donations.”

Hickman’s and the Ethics Commission’s bill also requires websites advocating for or against a candidate or ballot question, or text message campaigns costing over $500 to disclose their sources of financing.

While tightening these reporting requirements, the bill would also relieve the Commission of having to publish a list of which candidates or political committees file their reports late. Where candidates waive the receipt of campaign funds altogether, it would allow them not to have to file financial reporting at all.

The lengthy bill did not draw anyone from the public or concerned institutions interested in testifying on the bill, leading Hickman to jokingly refer to that segment of the session as the “fastest public hearing in history.”

Moving on to the proposals that would impact the law on public financing of campaigns, the Committee heard testimony on two bills from Sen. Richard Bennett (R-Oxford) that would impact the state’s MCEA program.

MCEA allows anyone running for state house, senate, or governor to reject private campaign donations in favor of receiving taxpayer funds through the program, provided they can prove their eligibility by collecting a minimum number of initial small donations.

Sen. Bennett’s LD 118 would expand the program to allow candidates for district attorney and sheriff the opportunity to tap into the taxpayer-funded program.

[RELATED: Lawmakers Seek to Broaden Maine’s “Clean” Election Act…]

When the legislature considered a bill to expand the program to county-level positions two years ago, some Republicans, including Rep. David Boyer (R-Poland), who currently sits on the VLA committee, opposed it.

“It seems like there’s a lot of tax dollars being spent, and this doesn’t seem a prudent use of our tax dollars when inflation is so high, when the costs for Mainers are so high, and there’s no tax relief being delivered to Mainers,” said Rep. Boyer of the expansion effort in 2023.

Although the program prevents a candidate’s campaign from spending or accepting private funds, it does not prevent private entities from using their funds to benefit or attack a specific candidate provided such donors do not coordinate with the political campaign that stands to gain from their third party advocacy.

The Maine Sheriffs’ Association testified against the bill, which its representative characterized as fiscally irresponsible.

“Maine Sheriffs believe those tax dollars can be put better to use supporting our jails, which are the first point of contact for many individuals struggling with mental health issues and substance abuse disorders,” said Kennebec Sheriff Ken Mason, on behalf of the association.

Meanwhile, the Portland-based Maine Citizens for Clean Elections supported the bill.

Bennett, who personally used MCEA to fund his past three campaigns, broke with many in his party by proposing LD 118, though his bill did draw co-sponsorship from one other Republican, Sen. Marianne Moore (R-Washington), and three Democrats, including Hickman.

No fiscal note has yet been released for LD 118, leaving legislators in the dark about how much the MCEA expansion will likely cost taxpayers.

Bennett’s second bill, LD 207, would simply remove the need for donors contributing to a candidate’s eligibility for MCEA to sign a document attesting that their contribution was made with personal funds. This document is unnecessary, he said, because donors must already affirm as much in a receipt and acknowledgment form that goes along with their donation.

Just over half (56 percent) of candidates running in last fall’s state election participated in the MCEA program at an estimated cost of about $3 million in public funds, officials said.