Undress For The Voters?

Vermont finishes last among the 50 states when it comes to requiring financial disclosure from its elected officials.  Which disturbs people who believe, earnestly, in good, clean government:

"Citizens have a right to expect some basic personal information about their elected officials that will help them as citizens understand and observe and make sense of the decisions and votes that legislators are making," [Mary] Boyle said. "And that is the ultimate concern – that elected officials are making decisions and taking votes that are in the public interest and not in their own personal interest."
    Peter Hirschfeld, Times Argus

Ms. Boyle is with Common Cause, which identifies itself as a "Nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen's lobbying organization promoting open, honest and accountable government."

One wonders if, in fact, citizens have a "right" to "basic personal information" from anyone.  They can ask for it.  And if they don't get it, then they can act accordingly.  On the national scene, they could, for example, demand that Charles Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, stop hiding behind lawyers and come clean or else ... what?  They'll vote him out of office? 

Rangel is clearly corrupt but his constituents don't seem to mind because they keep re-electing him.  And, it should be pointed out, Mr. Rangel is required to abide by all those stringent federal financial disclosure laws to get elected in the first place.  If, indeed, he came clean in his disclosure documents, then his constituents don't care that he is corrupt, and possibly considered it a political virtue.  The old, "He may be a crook but he's our crook," line of thinking.  Rangel will continue to be re-elected no matter what.

If Vermont lags in disclosure, it also seems to perform pretty poorly in the corruption game.  No Rod Blagojevich.  No William "the Refrigerator" Jefferson.  Just the usual earnest and honest Vermont politicians, too many of them in thrall to a hopeless set of ideas. 

Demand extensive disclosure from your politicians and you will get politicians who don't have much regard for their own privacy. 

Which means they won't have any for ours.

Comments

[Paul]

I think we are lacking a disclosure of campaign contribtions that are claimed to be too small to itemize. We see hundreds of thousands of dollars listed as individual, small contributions. I think we found out from Hillary Clinton that it's very possible for someone to "persuade" a bunch of people to make small contributions.
If a campaign has the time to accept $10, $20 and $50 contributions, I should think they would have time to make a simple list of contributors and the amount contributed.
So, I don't think we can say that Vermont does poorly in the corruption game when we really don't have all the details on which a judgment can be made.

[Ed G. Mann]

Money is speech. That is SCOTUS speaking. With credit cards, the internet, and good ole cash, I don't know how you stop money from flowing into campaigns and I don't believe you should.

Keeping FOREIGN money out is a different matter, there I think Obama (his campaign) was guilty of collecting outside funds. Clinton did and was caught too.

Figure out how to stop that. And poison ACoRN.

[Mark Shepard]

Full disclosure, no limits, no foreign money. That is how it should be. Simple and transparent.

I was the single no vote on Campaign Finance charade bill when I was in the VT Senate. But single votes don't amount to much.