Legislature To Consider New Campaign Finance Rules

Local campaign finance law would be scrapped under bill pending in Oklahoma Legislature
by Rick Green

Local campaign finance regulations in Oklahoma have become virtually impossible to enforce, say backers of a measure that would scrap these laws in favor of a new system.

A bill pending in the Legislature would make often-confusing local rules more closely track with laws for state races, said Sen. A.J. Griffin, R-Guthrie, one of the bill’s authors.

“It improves the transparency of the process and it minimizes any corruption, and that’s the goal here,” Griffin said.

Laws governing things such as how much a political donor can contribute to a local campaign, how those contributions are reported and where the public can access those reports are contained in what is known as the Political Subdivisions Ethics Act.

“This act was written in 1995 and has been amended very little since then,” said Lee Slater, executive director of the state Ethics Commission. “It would generously be described as flawed in that much of it is unclear and it is certainly out of date. This would allow for uniform interpretation and enforcement of campaign laws at all levels of government in Oklahoma.”

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