Two Shinning Stars, Senators Jimmy Higdon And Damon Thayer, Start To Emerge Before Kentucky General Assembly Session.

Campaign finance revisions on agenda
By Joseph Gerth

For the fourth time in as many years, the Kentucky General Assembly will consider changes to the state’s campaign finance law aimed at providing greater transparency on donations to candidates.

The bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, is hoping that it fares better this year than in the past.

The bill has typically died in the House — without explanation.

Thayer said he is considering changes in the bill that may make it more palatable to House leaders who have killed the measure in the past.

The bill, which was recommended by a task force on elections several years ago, calls for additional campaign finance reporting deadlines and requires campaign accounts to be closed by a certain date after elections.

A portion of Kentucky’s election law was struck down by a federal court in 2004, leaving gaps that allow candidates to continue raising money indefinitely to pay off campaign debts.

Thayer’s bill also would require candidates for statewide office to file their fundraising reports electronically.

Additionally, the bill would allow campaigns to accept contributions from federal political action committees that are based in Kentucky, which is currently prohibited, and would give the state Registry of Election Finance greater ability to quickly dispose of frivolous complaints.

The legislation also would allow campaigns to quickly correct mistakes in reports to avoid being guilty of campaign finance violations. Currently, a campaign is guilty of a non-knowing violation if it accepts an illegal contribution, even if the contribution is immediately returned to the donor.

Federal campaign law gives campaigns a grace period to identify contributions that are larger than allowed by law or that violate other provisions of campaign finance law.

Thayer said he plans to remove controversial provisions that helped hang the bill up in the past, including one that exempted media companies from having to report a candidate endorsement as a contribution.

Some groups had opposed such a provision because it would hold newspapers to a different standard than other businesses and political action groups.

But Thayer said lawyers have told him the provision isn’t needed and that even without the exemption media companies wouldn’t be required to report.

Other bills that will be considered include a constitutional amendment to remove from the state’s oath of office language in which the officeholder must swear that he or she has not been involved in a duel with deadly weapons and another amendment that would restore felons’ right to vote after they serve their sentence.

Jimmy Higdon, the Senate’s newest member, has prefiled bills that would make it illegal to send recorded political phone calls to numbers on the federal do not call list and one that would limit sessions of the General Assembly to just 30 days per year.

Thayer also has prefiled legislation that would require so-called 527 groups — political organizations created under chapter 527 of the IRS code — to file reports listing spending and donors with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance before elections. Under the current law, such groups must file reports only at the end of the year.

One of those groups, Keep Our Jobs in Kentucky, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars this year on two special state Senate elections.