In Support of An Act Relative to Accountability for Corporate Political Spending
We sorely need this bill as result of a terrible Supreme Court decision last year. The decision in Citizens United v. FEC afforded already powerful corporate interests even greater influence in our elections. In that decision, five of the nine justices decided to sweep away decades of legal precedent and protections which served to uphold the integrity of our elections process. An Act Relative to Accountability for Corporate Political Spending is a straightforward and important response to this ‘deform’.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony today. I am here to represent MASSPIRG, a statewide, nonprofit, nonpartisan, member-supported consumer advocacy organization. We are in support of SB 305, sponsored by Senator Jamie Eldridge.
This bill would require corporations chartered in Massachusetts to include the details of their political spending in their quarterly reports to shareholders and require any expenditure, or combination of expenditures, within a single year in excess of $5,000 to be specifically authorized by a majority of a company’s board of directors.
We sorely need this bill as result of a terrible Supreme Court decision last year. The decision in Citizens United v. FEC afforded already powerful corporate interests even greater influence in our elections. In that decision, five of the nine justices decided to sweep away decades of legal precedent and protections which served to uphold the integrity of our elections process. An Act Relative to Accountability for Corporate Political Spending is a straightforward and important response to this ‘deform’.
The provisions in this bill combine transparency and accountability, both invaluable to election campaigns. That being said, this bill certainly won’t solve the problems of corporate influence in elections, special interest money flooding politics, or the increasing alienation of voters from as their franchise as individual citizens become a smaller and smaller part of the process. But we can’t stand frozen in the face of this terrible Supreme Court decision; even discrete and specific steps, like this bill includes, will have some impact as we work towards reclaiming democracy.
As the Supreme Court deemed that corporations should be treated like people for the purposes of elections (a position MASSPIRG strongly disagrees with), we should at least mandate that the actual people who own corporations have a say in how their money is being spent. That’s what this bill aims to accomplish and we hope the Committee will give it a favorable report.
Thank you for your consideration.
Authors
Janet Domenitz
Executive Director, MASSPIRG
Janet has been the executive director of MASSPIRG since 1990 and directs programs on consumer protection, zero waste, health and safety, public transportation, and voter participation. Janet has co-founded or led coalitions, including Earth Day Greater Boston, Campaign to Update the Bottle Bill and the Election Modernization Coalition. On behalf of MASSPIRG, Janet was one of the founding members of Transportation for Massachusetts (T4MA), a statewide coalition of organizations advocating investment in mass transit to curb climate change, improve public health and address equity. Janet serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for the Consumer Federation of America and serves on the Common Cause Massachusetts executive committee, Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow board of directors, and Department of Environmental Protection Solid Waste Advisory Committee. For her work, Janet has received Common Cause’s John Gardner Award and Salem State University’s Friend of the Earth Award. Janet lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two sons, and every Wednesday morning she slow-runs the steps at Harvard Stadium with the November Project.
