Maryland Senate President Thomas Miller introduced a bill today to create a pilot program for publicly financed campaigns.
“This proposal to allow candidates to raid the public treasury in the name of cleaning up the political process is deeply flawed and will not change the way the legislature does business in Maryland,” said Center for Competitive Politics President Sean Parnell. “The use of a check-off funding mechanism doesn’t change the fact that taxpayer dollars will be used to fund campaign ads and political consultants.”
The bill funds the pilot program by placing a voluntary check-off of $5 on income tax forms. It would allow about 25 percent of candidates seeking legislative seats to participate in the 2014 election cycle, according to press reports. The federal government has a similar check-off system for the failed system of publicly-financed presidential campaigns. The system has continually declined in popularity, with 28.7 percent of taxpayers contributing in 1980 and just 11.3 percent in 2002.
“Taxpayer financing of campaigns does not limit the ability of organized interest groups to support favored candidates, which is supposedly one of the main reasons for using taxpayer dollars to fund political campaigns,” said Parnell. “The states that have implemented these welfare for politicians have seen no changes as a result of these schemes, other than less public funding available for other important priorities.”
In Arizona, where a similar program exists for legislative and statewide candidates, interest groups routinely collect the needed qualifying contributions, leading to candidates that are just as grateful to interest groups as if they had simply made a direct contribution. These schemes also benefit incumbents by limiting the total dollars available to participating candidates, making it more difficult for a challenger to compete with an incumbent who already has broad name recognition and years of press coverage.
