NEWS

Markell signs limited campaign finance reforms

Jonathan Starkey
The News Journal
  • Law provides whistleblower protection to Delawareans who report potential violations of campaign law
  • It also require corporate entities to name a %22responsible party%22 for political contributions
  • It doesn%27t require lobbyists to pay a registration fee to help fund the Public Integrity Commission

Gov. Jack Markell on Tuesday signed into law new campaign finance reforms, but even supporters of the legislation concede that lawmakers stopped well short of overhauling Delaware's election laws to prevent the kind of corruption identified in a scathing report from special prosecutor E. Norman Veasey.

Among the eight bills signed Tuesday were measures to provide whistleblower protection to Delawareans who report potential violations of campaign law; require corporate entities to name a "responsible party" for political contributions; give politicians a path for returning suspicious contributions to charities; and require public officers and lobbyists to file disclosure reports electronically.

"I'm sure things can always be better," Markell said after a signing ceremony at the New Castle County Courthouse Museum in New Castle. "But you're also dealing with 62 members of the General Assembly, all of whom have different views. Getting eight of these things done is meaningful progress."

Lawmakers never considered broader legislation that would have banned contributions from corporate entities and required donors to disclose their employer and occupation, two hallmark recommendations from Veasey, a former chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court who urged the General Assembly to curtail Delaware's "pay-to-play" political culture.

Republican Rep. Deborah Hudson put both recommendations into proposed legislation, but neither bill reached the House floor for a vote.

The General Assembly shelved another Veasey-backed bill that would have required lobbyists to pay a registration fee to help fund the Public Integrity Commission, the state's starved ethics office.

Dee Durham, campaign director for Common Cause Delaware, which campaigns for transparency in government, said the legislation Markell signed on Tuesday represented the "low-hanging fruit" and said lawmakers should have gone further.

"Of course we're pleased with these bills," said Durham, who attended Tuesday's signing ceremony. "We are disappointed in some bills that didn't get passed."

Veasey, who was hired by Attorney General Beau Biden in 2011 and billed state taxpayers more than $1 million for his investigation, showed in December that Markell's 2008 campaign accepted various improper donations from corporate entities tied to developers.

His 101-page December report also found that, in three cases, state lawmakers did not report gifts, as required by state law, from liquor executive Chris Tigani.

Tigani and Dover developer Michael Zimmerman pleaded guilty to reimbursing other donors to several state political campaigns to bypass individual contribution limits.

In a recent interview, Veasey, who recommended several of the proposals that Markell signed on Tuesday, called it "disappointing" that the General Assembly did not fully pursue his recommendations – including disclosure of donors' employment information, and a ban on corporate entity contributions, two measures that spoke directly to malfeasance identified in his December report.

"What we said in our report is these are reforms that are clearly needed and should be done promptly," Veasey said. "To the extent they were not done properly, it's disappointing. I think it's too bad they didn't do all of them. I hope that someday the General Assembly will come back and do those important reforms."

Rep. Paul Baumbach, a Newark Democrat who attended Tuesday's ceremony, said "we got 80 percent done. Obviously, by definition, it was the easier stuff to get done. I'm very happy to have gotten 80 percent done. The last part is going to take more convincing."

Contact Jonathan Starkey at 983-6756, on Twitter @jwstarkey or at jstarkey@delawareonline.com.