Corruption or the appearance of corruption: Who IS calling the shots?
By Rob Roper

Last summer, Vermont’s campaign finance laws were declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, and they were thrown out. Today, a new campaign finance reform bill is making its way through the Statehouse. Its primary supporter, VPIRG, claims the restrictions on Vermonters’ First Amendment rights that would result from the new bill are necessary to eliminate "corruption or the appearance of corruption" in Vermont  politics. They are also supposed to reduce undue influence by any "single source" over the political process. 

Events of this past week should give Vermonters pause before taking VPIRG at its word. 

An ad campaign supporting an outrageous tax increase on Vermont Yankee states "…we know the difference between what’s good for Vermont and what’s good for a lobbyist." The print and radio campaign clearly intend to solicit others to influence legislative or administrative action, and clearly cost more than $500. Ironically, under Vermont law this is the very definition of "lobbying."  (2 V.S.A. §261(9)

The ad’s headline reads, Who’s calling the shots? Good question. The only indication of who called the shots for this campaign is a website, www.vermontersdecide.com. Who is Vermonters Decide? Go to that address, and you get the website of The Climate Change Group. Okay, who is the Climate Change Group? As of this writing, not a registered lobbyist as required by Vermont  lobbyist disclosure laws (2 V.S.A. §261(12)). 

But, on its own website -- no direct connection to the ad at all -- VPIRG claims credit, "Today, VPIRG and our allies struck back with our own series of radio and print ads encouraging the public to contact their elected leaders and tell them that Vermonters, not lobbyists, get to decide our energy future." 

Funny, according to the Secretary of State’s office, VPIRG employs five lobbyists (Paul Burns, Andrew Hudson, Scudder Parker, Sean Sarah and Colleen Thomas). This is more lobbyists than the four Entergy, owner of Vermont Yankee, employs. This is the fact, despite the untruthful and misleading claim in the ad that "dozens" are "swarming the Statehouse" on Entergy’s behalf. 

On the humorous side, VPIRG is hypocritical for running an ad by lobbyists that purports to be against lobbyists. It’s also funny that the ad states the average Vermont family has zero lobbyists working on its behalf in Montpelier. Who are VPIRGs army of lobbyists working for? By their own implication here, not Vermont families. At least that aspect of the ad campaign is true.

But, more disturbingly, by hiding their involvement in this campaign and its false claims behind a deceptive straw organization, VPIRG is not being honest and above board with Vermonters on several levels... And, these are the people guiding the "reform" of our election process! 

Here’s the kicker: the campaign finance reform bill, S.164, is sponsored by Senator Ed Flanagan (D-Chittenden), who happens to be a member of VPIRG's Board of Directors. So, here we have a powerful special interest group that employs five lobbyists in Montpelier, that apparently neglected to comply with our lobbyist disclosure laws and hid their involvement with an ad campaign that is factually inaccurate from the public, while at the same time they are pushing the election "reform" bill of a State Senator, who also happens to be a board member of that same powerful special interest group.

This is a real example of "corruption or the appearance of corruption" and undue influence by a single source on the political process. Unfortunately, VPIRG’s campaign finance reform bill won’t fix the problem. It will, however, allow them to make matters worse by hindering the ability of candidates, parties, and regular citizens who do genuinely represent the will of the people and the families of Vermont from effectively speaking out against or countering these kinds of practices. In our opinion, this is VPIRG's objective.
 

Rob Roper is chairman of the Vermont Republican State Committee.
Contact: Rob Roper, 802-223-3411