House Bill 347: Special Session Campaign Finance Reform Act

One of the issues that motivates me the most as a public official is preventing the undue influence of money in politics. I think that all members of our community should have an equal voice in public policy -- not just those with lots of money.

Luckily, the vast majority of my colleagues in the Maryland General Assembly agree with this sentiment. For this reason we have in place a campaign fund-raising ban during the annual 90-day regular legislative session (January - April). During this period, legislators, the Governor, the Comptroller and the Attorney General are prohibited from soliciting or receiving any funds for their campaigns. This allows us to focus on policy and prevents even the appearance of impropriety or conflict of interest.

Although we have a fund-raising ban for regular sessions, the same ban does not apply to emergency or "Special Sessions" which the Governor can call at his discretion. I believe that our laws should treat the fund-raising during regular and special sessions consistently. So I have introduced House Bill 347: Special Session Campaign Finance Reform Act. This bill enacts the same fund-raising ban for special sessions as we currently have for regular sessions.

This is an issue that I have been discussing for some time now. You can read my October 2007 letter to the Gazette about this issue by clicking here.

Recently, both the Senate President and Speaker of the House have indicated their support for fund-raising parity between regular and special session. You can their comments in the Baltimore Sun by clicking here.

Just to be clear, I'm not at all accusing anyone of wrongdoing. In fact, during the special session, I received a few campaign donations myself. This was completely lawful and in compliance with the guidance given by our Ethics counsel. However, I think the law should change to give our citizens that extra level of confidence in the integrity of their elected officials. The citizens of Maryland certainly deserve that.

You can read the actual text of the legislation by clicking here.

- Saqib

[UPDATE] On February 27th, the Baltimore Sun ran an article about the bill hearing. You can read it by clicking here.