The Reform that Makes All Other Reforms Possible

By Mary Bisharat

The latest figures on the governor’s colossal fund-raising and fund-spending career are jaw-dropping. Barbara O’Connor, a politics and media expert at California State University, Sacramento, has claimed that the governor’s special election could see “an excess of $500 million in spending,†and that’s in an off-election year.

California’s voters are sickened and alienated. They don’t want the special election, and they do want their elected officials to do their job: taking care of California’s business.

There is only one way to convert our decayed, dysfunctional political system, and that is by passing a bill to provide clean money for public elections. Such a bill is now in our Legislature: Assembly Bill 583, sponsored by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock. Maine and Arizona passed similar legislation in 1998, which broke the hold of special interests on their legislators.

It’s bipartisan, it’s healthy, and it’s the one reform that makes all other reform possible. Check it out: www.CAclean.org.

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