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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Media / Politics We'll Never Know the Cost of that Anti-Tax Oregonian Ad

Posted by Sarah Mirk on Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 12:47 PM

Well, kids, our government got less transparent on January 1, 2010 and I didn't even notice until now.

In Oregon, political campaigns have to disclose how they spend their money for advertisements on TV, radio and in newspapers. So in the campaign finance records for anti-66/67 group Oregonians Against Job Killing Taxes, for example, you can see they paid $18,891 to KOIN and $12,172 to KATU for TV ads this past year.

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But Senate Bill 783 (which passed 55-4 last spring) tweaked some small language in the election campaign finance law, erasing that transparent breakdown of funds. As of January 1, 2010, the Secretary of State's office told me when I called this afternoon trying to dig up how much Job Killing Taxes paid for last Sunday's Oregonian ad, political campaigns do not have to break down how much and who they pay for ads. Instead, reporters, voters and other interested parties can see that Job Killing Taxes paid a company called Marketing Communications Services, Inc $25,000 five days before the O ad ran, but you can't see where exactly the money went. Maybe some of that $25,000 went to KPAM talk radio station, maybe some went to the execs at Marketing Communications Services, Inc. Though Carla Axtman at BlueOregon got an Oregonian ad person to confirm that a Sunday wrap-around costs $24,950, since the state is no longer keeping the books open on campaign finance WE'LL NEVER KNOW exactly. Thanks, legislature!

This small change is a big deal to reporters and people trying to keep political campaigns honest, especially when Oregon has other political financing transparency problems. It took the state government two months to tabulate how much lobbyists spent during last year's legislative session and when they finally released the numbers two weeks late, I was the only reporter in the state who had called to inquire about how much lobbyists spent in Salem. That's absurd.

 

Comments (5) RSS

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1
In the Questionland post right below this one (in which we can't post comments), Mr. Humphrey needs to choose between wall/walls and is/are.

@S.Mirk - Can you complete the logic chain for me, in this article? Not knowing how much lobbyists spend in Salem is absurd...because? What dangers stem from the public not knowing exactly how much the Oregonion charged the JKT group for their newspaper ad?
Posted by Reymont on January 20, 2010 at 1:10 PM · Report
2
'how much lobbyists spent in Salem'

Maybe no one else asked because the question and the terms 'lobbyist' and 'in Salem' are so vague. Who would know the answer to that question?

So are you upset the government is ineffective and non-transparent? Is that why they should get MORE tax money?

Posted by D on January 20, 2010 at 2:29 PM · Report
3
The reason we want to know how much the lobbyists spend is because it makes it easier to track the special interests, and as such, it also makes the special interests more careful...

If we know that the Beer&Wine lobby is paying for trips to Hawaii, (for instance,) then it is much easier to counter their lobbing effort, and they'll know that, so they won't do something so obvious as actually buying votes outright. On the other hand, if we don't know that, then when people wonder at the end of the year why the alcohol taxes didn't go up, nobody, except the people who paid for the trips, (and the people that took them,) really know why the bill just died in committee...

@D: Any organization with even an amateur bookkeeper could answer that question. "Lobbying" has a very specific definition according to the IRS, and you have to keep track of it. What (I'm assuming) Sara means by "in Salem" is money spent lobbying state government, (as opposed to city or federal,) again, something that any bookkeeper better than Bill Sizemore could pull out of their records in an instant, (and does.) The only problem is collecting those records up from all the separate filings and putting them all in the same place so that the public can read them. The rest of your post is your special kind of nonsense, since the state doesn't lobby itself.
Posted by Matthew D on January 20, 2010 at 9:01 PM · Report
4
Let 'em have it, Mirk!
Posted by Andy Mesa on January 21, 2010 at 3:19 AM · Report
5
Reymont and D -

What Matthew D said. Don't you care how political campaign spend their money and which corporations/special interest groups are spending the most time and money influencing politicians? I do.
Posted by s.mirk on January 21, 2010 at 5:00 PM · Report

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