Rep. France Supports Republican Push for Clean Elections

HARTFORD – The House of Representatives took the first step to fund state election campaigns a little differently here in the State of Connecticut starting in 2016. Rep. Mike France (R-42) Thursday applauded the passage of a bill, as amended by a Republican proposal, to clean up state-funded elections.

State Senate and House Republican leaders proposed this plan to close loopholes in the Citizen’s Election Program (CEP), the state’s current public campaign financing law, in a press conference back in January. The bill passed on the House Floor by a bipartisan margin of 134-12, and Rep. France hopes that it will result, as anticipated, in savings to the taxpayer of approximately $7 million in a gubernatorial election year and $2.4 million in presidential cycles.

The strike-all amendment to H.B. 6749, which completely rewrote the underlying bill and associated fiscal impact, prohibits candidate family members from being paid by any candidate or candidate committee that has accepted CEP money in an amount that equals more than $1,000.

The bill also includes capping organizational expenditures by state parties, reducing individual donor limits to state parties from $10,000 to $5,000 and prohibiting state contractors from donating to a federal account to fund a state race. Most importantly, however, it reduces all CEP grants by 25% – an expense that cost Connecticut taxpayers $33.4 million in 326 publicly-funded campaigns in 2014 – and prevents abuse of taxpayer-funded campaign grants.

“My goal throughout this session has been to save state taxpayers money and improve disclosure of state spending. To that end, I introduced a bill that would require campaign consultants to disclose all expenditures, encouraging transparency of taxpayer-funded campaign spending,” said Rep. France, member of the Legislature’s Government Administration & Elections (GAE) Committee. “Another of my bills would have eliminated grants for unopposed candidates. Though I was unable to see either bill passed by the GAE Committee, I am nevertheless confident that the bill passed Thursday, which incorporates some of the initiatives I proposed, will make significant progress in restoring public trust and openness in future elections.”

The CEP, which funds gubernatorial, statewide and state Senate and House races, is a publicly-financed program that provides candidates with campaign funding after achieving specific private contribution thresholds. Since 2008, the 1,185 taxpayer-funded CEP campaigns have cost $80.7 million, according to the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis.

The amended bill now moves to the Senate for a vote before it can be officially signed into law by the Governor.