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Public Financing Proponents Say Plan Would Limit Appearance of Conflicts  Share
Creating a public financing system for Illinois' top-level judicial races would ease any perception that big-money interests are influencing the outcome of court cases, backers of the plan said Tuesday. ''We want to protect the sanctity of judicial impartiality,'' Comptroller Dan Hynes said during his testimony in front of the Joint Committee on Government Reform, a bipartisan panel formed earlier this year in the wake of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's arrest on corruption charges. The legislative committee convened Tuesday for the second half of a public hearing on campaign finance. Much of the first part of the hearing on Monday focused on whether Illinois should set contribution limits for political campaigns Ð an idea that appeared to fall flat with some committee members. For weeks, members of the panel have been examining proposals meant to clean up state government and make its operations more transparent. Gov. Pat Quinn has created a different group, the Illinois Reform Commission, to scrutinize similar issues. Hynes testified Tuesday that public financing of Supreme Court and Appellate Court campaigns would ensure the success of the most qualified candidates, rather than the best-funded ones. Some of the money for a public financing system would come from a voluntary checkoff on state income tax returns, said Hynes and Rep. Kathy Ryg, D-Vernon Hills.
Judicial campaigns all across the country have become more expensive and reliant on contributions from attorneys, interest groups and others with a stake in the outcome of court cases, said Bert Brandenburg, executive director of the Justice at Stake Campaign. One example, he said, is a 2004 Illinois Supreme Court contest in which the two candidates spent a combined $9 million. ''This escalating race for cash has left many judges feeling trapped in a bad system,'' he told the committee. Public financing would relieve the pressure for judicial candidates to seek large campaign contributions, Brandenburg said. Public financing should be extended to other types of political races, too, said Rep. Will Burns, D-Chicago, who is working on a bill that would enact such a system for legislative and statewide contests. Candidates who opt into public financing would qualify for those dollars only if they meet certain fundraising thresholds by collecting money from small donors, Burns said. ''The idea is not to give public money to people who are not credible candidates,'' he told the committee. Also on Tuesday, some lawmakers on the committee said they'd like to expand the powers of the State Board of Elections so it can better enforce election laws. They asked Board of Elections officials to come up with recommendations for lawmakers to review. The Joint Committee on Government Reform's next meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday, March 24 in Room 114 of the State Capitol. The hearing will deal with state purchasing issues. Documents and audio from committee hearings are available on the General Assembly's Web site at www.ilga.gov. Click on ''Joint Committee on Government Reform.'' The hearings also are broadcast live on the Web. Gatehouse News is a wire service covering both statewide and national news.
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