DN Editorial: Dark money talks: In Citizen's United era, enforcing finance reports is crucial

WHEN Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez and her staff made election-day rounds of polling places in the 7th District on May 19, they saw squads of workers for her opponent, Manny Morales, many of them sporting "Vote for Manny" T-shirts.

Yet Morales had just filed a campaign-finance report that showed he had spent a mere $20,000 on his campaign and had only $1,400 left in the days before the primary.

Where did the money for all those workers come from?

That's the question Sanchez asked the city's Ethics Board to investigate last week, in a complaint against "dark money" that went to help Morales. Sanchez believes that most of the money was funneled through the wards in her district.

For the most part, no one knows how much was raised and how it was spent because most of the wards failed to file financial disclosure reports as required by state law. The requirement has been on the books since 1978.

But in this year's primary, more than two dozen of the city's 69 Democratic wards - including those in Sanchez's Council district - failed to file a single scrap of paper about their finances with the city or the state. According to a report on Philly.com's the Next Mayor, "dark money" estimates total $750,000 citywide.

Politicians and their contributors can laugh off the state's filing requirements because there is no real penalty. Failure to file on time is subject to a $25-a-day fine and is capped at $250.

The city's election law has more bite. The fine for failure to file is $250 a day, up to $2,000 in the first month and $1,000 a month thereafter.

The problem is one of enforcement. Both the state Bureau of Elections and the city Ethics Board lack the staff needed to monitor all political-action committees and chase after violators.

The Ethics Board recently sent certified letters to all the wards that failed to file, reminding them of the requirements of the law and telling them to begin to file in the next reporting cycle. But the board didn't ask them to file reports from earlier in the year, mostly because the agency doesn't have the capacity to handle such a large influx of reports.

The Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United and other court rulings have opened the floodgates of money in the past few years that affect everything from large national races to small local ones, like Sanchez v. Morales. Consider: In 2012, two presidential candidates raised about $2 billion. Spending for 2016's race could reach $10 billion. Local spending totaled $27 million during this year's primary season. At the state level, the race for the Supreme Court, at $16 million, set a national record for spending on a court race. Have the agencies overseeing and enforcing campaign spending rules kept pace with the money? Of course not.

We believe it's time for a radical notion: Let's start taxing campaign contributions. We don't have to call it a tax; it can be called "enforcement fees," based on a percentage of funds raised. Use the money raised to better fund the election enforcement agencies at the local and state level. If candidates (and donors) are going to benefit from anything-goes spending, let's at least keep a pretense of democracy alive with some scrutiny of that spending. Money shouldn't be allowed to remain dark forever.