[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Item 5C--Election Code changes re corporate expenditures

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Cowles, Macon

The background for understanding the place of corporations in the life of the community and the country is interesting, and it informs the work that we have before us in considering regulating the amount of money that can be put
 into local elections by corporations. In our dinner on Thursday night, we learned that Comcast spent $750,000 to try to defeat a measure on the Longmont ballot that enabled the City to provide broadband to residents. In other words, corporate money is an issue
 that confronts many municipalities.


The founders had strong statements about the dangers of corporate power, e.g., Jefferson who said “our moneyed corporations
 bid defiance to the laws of our country
”). During the ascendance of the Robber Barons in the late 19th
 century, the Supreme Court asserted, without explanation, the position that corporations have the rights of a “person” under the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet 1907 began a century of finely honed restrictions on corporations in politics, in 26 states and the Congress,
 that culminated in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (“McCain-Feingold”) which banned corporate electioneering communications during the sixty days prior to an election.


I highly recommend Jeffrey Clements’ 17-page monograph covering the growth of corporate rights over the history of our country that can be found on the American Constitution Society website here: http://www.acslaw.org/publications/issue-briefs/beyond-citizens-united-v-fec-re-examining-corporate-rights.
 In January 2010, the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC, 130 S. Ct. 876 (U.S. 2010), sweeping aside a century of regulation of corporate money in politics. The court left some ground for the regulation of corporations in connection with elections,
 while prohibiting blanket bans on corporate speech during any part of the election cycle.


On page 199 of the packet for June 4, 2013, there is proposed language of new BRC 13-2-23 Contributions to Corporations--a provision that would require corporations to get shareholder approval as a condition of using the corporation's
 wealth to sway voters in local elections. The proposal attempts to occupy the ground that remains to regulate corporate contributions after Citizens United v. FEC. 


I have additionally proposed an enforcement provision in a Hotline email that was sent out Thursday, May 30 at about 4:30 PM. It is not enough to make substantive law changes; there must be an enforcement mechanism equivalent to
 the importance of the issue. 




Macon Cowles
Boulder City Councilor