The Golden Rule Is Vague ...In Kentucky

Those of us who cover politics, on any level, know the importance of  the golden rule: he who has the Gold, writes the Rules.  That's why we favor laws that tell the voter who has to spend how much trying to get Joe SixPak elected. You need to know that before voting. While there are rules REQUIRING such campaign contributions to be reported, many of these laws are weak. That's where "dark money" comes in. It doesn't have to be reported under some strange federal rules (and lack of appropriate laws and proper enforcement.) Such money spent each election cycle is in the Zillions, we just don't know how many Zillions.
 
Then there's the Citizens United decision, proclaiming that corporations, BEING CITIZENS, don't have to make such reports; totally devastating what weak laws do exist. There's a national movement on, properly, to get this Supreme Court decision overturned.
BTW, forget Russian (or Chinese, or Iranian, or...) hacking into our elections, bad as that is. With weak election finance and reporting laws, they could spend their way into electing the favored candidates and no American would be the wiser.

So this week, when we learned that a Kentucky law on election spending was so weak as to be 110% useless, one has to wonder why?  Now, all of this reporting is based on a story in the Courier-Journal. (More later) Which is what the media is for. They noticed a group called Kentucky Tomorrow was placing Facebook ads, but hadn't reported its spending to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, as the law requires. To the group's credit, a day after the CJ asked why, the group made the required report, saying they had been "inadvertently overlooked." Then the paper asked the Registry for its response, since the law REQUIRES a fine of$100 a day for such late reports.
 
The Registry's head guy said no fine would be imposed, because our law is so vague. It does NOT say how much time a group has to file after spending! It could be weeks, or months, or years--the law does not say. Yes, a group a lawyers in our legislature wrote a law requiring such reports, and fines if they weren't made, without indicating how long they would have before violating the law.

Do you smell  a dead rodent here? Such an obvious part of the law is missing. Was it planned that way, deliberately? (It aids all parties.) Lacking this, the Registry gives all groups "a reasonable time" to file..a "reasonable time" may be anybody's guess, especially if a group contests a fine in court. With elections an almost yearly event in Kentucky, this law needs changing, but this time, please let's not let the lawyers write it.

BTW, Kentucky Tomorrow is a Delaware corporation, so the CJ found out, under US (not Kentucky) reporting laws, one contributor to it also is an investor in the proposed Braidy Industries aluminum plant in Eastern Kentucky, the same one that has a proposed heavy investment by a Russian aluminum firm.

Not that you and I would have known any of this without a vigilant, free press to tell us.
And that brings me to a sad note: The reporter who broke all this, and who has diligently covered the state's budget for years, and political shenanigans such as this weak Registry law, is retiring. Tom Loftus told me "it's time," after so many years of able reporting on the statehouse beat. I will miss him, greatly--and so will you.  Fortunately, the CJ seems to have a new crop of young capable reporters on the politics beat. It may take them some time to be as good as Tom has consistently been over the years, but all of us need to wish them well.  "Nothing less," as Jason Robards AKA Ben Bradley of the Watergate -breaking Washington Post said in All The President's Men, "than the future of the Republic depends upon it."

I'm just sayin'...