Many of today’s big news stories have roots going back decades. Why then does the state destroy campaign finance records after only five years?
Two recent major national news stories coming out of Pennsylvania — the Sandusky / PSU / Tom Corbett scandal and the Harrisburg debt / Corbett bailout stories — demonstrate the woeful inadequacy of our state’s campaign finance reporting laws.
In both cases, these stories have roots going back decades.
Yet, under current law, the state only keeps hard copies campaign finance records going back a mere five years.
As most of us now know, Jerry Sandusky and board members of his Second Mile charity had been seeking and getting the help of state officials for decades.
In the last few years, some of those Second Mile board members gave lavishly to the campaigns of Gov. Tom Corbett.
But, as I wrote elsewhere, Sandusky founded the Second Mile in 1977, some 20 years before he was first caught in the shower with a boy.
And, in 1982, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania licensed the Second Mile as a foster care agency. By October 1982, three foster kids — all boys — would be living in the house.
Did Sandusky or members of his board give political donations to state officials in the 1970s or 80s?
We’ll never know, as the state has long ago destroyed campaign finance records from the 70s and 80s.
Likewise, Harrisburg’s debt problems also date from the 1980s, when former Mayor Steve Reed began floating bonds with the help of politically well-connected bond firms.
In 1985, for example, Mayor Reed floated $215,000,000 in “electric revenue bonds” for an environmentally unfriendly rubber dam across the Susquehanna River. The rubber dam was never built, but the financial damage continued for almost 30 years.
The underwriting firm for the 1985 bonds, Russell, Rea & Zappala, was used by many Democrats in that era, who in return received political contributions from principals in the firm. The brother of the founders of the firm, Stephen Zappala Sr., was a state Supreme Court justice.
Who contributed to Mayor Reed’s political campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s?
We may never know.
The state’s electronic election records are just as abysmal.
While an electronic search at the state campaign finance website (https://www.campaignfinanceonline.state.pa.us) of the name “Tom Corbett” brings up hits supposedly going back to 1998, those records are often inaccurate, or incomplete.
The state campaign website is hard to use, navigate or understand.
For example, while writing this week about campaign donations from the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association to state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille, I found one state web document that said the trial lawyers gave Castille $50,000 on July 19, while another said the date of the contribution was August 28.
Which is correct? Fifty thousand dollars to the state’s chief justice is hardly small potatoes.
While many bloggers today are only interested in what happened last week and are content to regurgitate someone else’s news, serious writers, journalists, researchers and the public must have access to accurate campaign finance records going back decades.
As current events show us, yesterday isn’t a thing of the past.
