The D’s and R’s have finally found something they can both agree on. I had previously written about HS 1 to HB 128, a candidate and party cash grab which was removed from the House Agenda once it was exposed.
Guess what? They’ve got another bill they plan to work under the cover of darkness of June 30 and July 1. And, while they won’t fund $$’s for road building, ‘leadership’, including ‘mortal enemies’ Greg Lavelle and Patti Blevins, are united in crushing any insurgent candidacies under something called a ‘Party Building Fund’. No, it’s not for buildings.
Ladeez and gentlemen, let me introduce to you SB 155, which is sort-of a Delaware version of Citizens United.
The bill creates a new fund for political parties. Here’s the key sentence:
No political party may make any expenditure from its building fund except for the costs of telephone and other communications services and the rental or purchase of equipment, office supplies, or an office or building.
Wrap your heads around the phrase ‘the costs of telephone and other communications services’. As the tipster who alerted me to this last-minute maneuver pointed out, we’re talking ‘carpet bombing in close elections, call centers in Utah, the purchase of a party’.
‘The purchase of a party’, you ask? Did I mention that individuals can donate as much as $20,000 apiece exclusively to this Party Building Fund? Over and above any other donations they make? And, no, I didn’t make up that name, it’s right there in the bill.
This bill, which was just introduced on June 24, can easily be worked under suspension of rules in both houses and be on its way to the Governor tomorrow. With no committee hearings or public debate (or at least public debate that anyone will be awake to hear). Which is precisely the way that John Daniello and Charles Bouvier de Flanders want it.
Call your legislators and tell them to stop making a mockery of our political system. Do it today. Wednesday will be too late.