Editorial: Campaign spending info seems cloudy at best now that Senate Bill 404 is law

Lawmakers say they favor transparency in campaign spending, but things still seem cloudy at best, now that Senate Bill 404 is law.

The measure, which Gov. David Ige had vetoed but was overridden this week, makes changes to the disclosure requirements for expenditures on ads and other campaign communications.

In the end, the bill makes things easier on political action committees (PACs) reporting their spending on candidates, and on the candidates and their own committees as well.

That’s the assessment of Sandy Ma, executive director of Common Cause Hawaii, the public-interest nonprofit that was tracking the bill.

The new law exempts candidates and candidate committees from the need to file a report on communications paid for before the election; it also lowers the amount triggering the reports to $1,000.

Those reports are to disclose, among other facts, the names and addresses of donors covering the cost of the communication.

Additionally, the PACs now must only make the report once, upon reaching the $1,000 threshold. This makes it unclear whether a PAC could underwrite an ad for multiple candidates and only have to report about the first one, Ma said.

“If their intent was to cover the dark money coming in, they made it worse,” she said.

Senate President Ron Kouchi and House Speaker Scott Saiki appeared Wednesday on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s “Spotlight Hawaii” webcast. In a response to a question about SB 404, Kouchi said newer candidates were aware only of the final campaign spending report for which they are still obligated. They ended up being fined for missing reports due before the election, he added.

But helping candidates avoid a stumble like that is not the purpose of electioneering laws: It’s to add transparency, and knowing who’s behind the money before the election is crucial.

Saiki added that the primary intent of the requirement when it was first enacted was to apply to PACs. However, candidates and their committees often buy ads in the final days of the campaign, too, so why should they be excused?

Ige notes in his veto statement that “any spending beyond the initial $1,000 will not have to be reported, resulting in less information being provided to the public prior to election day.”

Exactly right. It was a strong rationale for a veto, which should have been allowed to stand.