Comment: No Right to Secret Campaign Gifts

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | Dec 29, 2008 | Legal Issue: Freedom of Speech | 0 |

FREE SPEECH — A post on the Lincoln News Messenger blog attacks the argument that disclosing financial contributions to state ballot measures like Proposition 8 improperly invades the donors' privacy and speech rights.

The argument is as pernicious as it is disingenuous.
It holds that mandatory campaign finance disclosure laws limit freedom of speech and of political action and that anonymous donations have traditionally protected groups, like the NAACP (they from government harassment, not from public accountability, which the columnists neatly ignore), and that public pressure to disclose donors who choose to not remain anonymous will accomplish what regulations already provide (yeah, right).
This is not just another wingnut attempt to protect wealthy corporate milch-cows. It's a full-tilt attempt to undermine California's campaign finance disclosure laws.

About The Editor

Terry Francke, General Counsel

Terry Francke has a 39-year history of helping journalists, citizens and public officials understand and use their First Amendment and open government rights. With CalAware, Francke has authored comprehensive and authoritative guidebooks to California law on access to government meetings and public records and the news gathering and publication rights of journalists. Focusing on these issues in public forum law, he supervises CalAware's legislative and litigation initiatives; conducts workshops on legal compliance; helps design public records audits; supports local sunshine ordinance drafting efforts; writes CalAware Today, a blog on current developments and proposals in the law and best practices; and answers countless queries by phone and e-mail from citizens, journalists, public officials and employees, and lawyers. Francke previously served 14 years as executive director and general counsel to the California First Amendment Coalition, after a 10-year post as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He has served as an advisory panel member to the National Center on Courts and the Media; taught journalism law at the Department of Communication at Stanford University; and served as an expert contributor to the 1994 major revisions to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the 2004 ballot proposition making open government a basic right of citizens under the California Constitution. Francke is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 1979 graduate of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Prior to his legal career, Francke worked as a weekly newspaper editor and in military and local government public affairs positions.

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