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10/19/2009 New Capitol tune: 'Taxpayer, can you spare $1?' By Steve Walters The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.  Walters But fewer than one in 20 taxpayers did it when they filed their 2008 taxes. What was popular 30 years ago, but is now seen as a failure? The answer: the $1-per-taxpayer checkoff created in the 1970s to publicly pay for elections. It was set up to offer candidates a "clean" source of campaign cash, so they wouldn't have to rely on special-interest groups, their PACs and wealthy individual contributors. Instead, 30 years later, special-interest and third-party cash is still king in state elections. The 2010 wide-open race for governor, for example, may cost ... well, make up a number: $30 million? $50 million? And, for the first time, candidates and third-party groups have spent $1 million on a campaign for an open Assembly seat -- the 2008 fight in south-central Wisconsin's 47th Assembly District won by Republican Rep. Keith Ripp. While the cost of running for election soared, the number of taxpayers using the check-this-box line to put $1 in the clean campaign fund evaporated. *When they filed their 1979 state income taxes, a record 19.7 percent of taxpayers designated $1 for this fund, raising $561,083, according to a report compiled by the Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections and hands out grants from the fund to the few brave candidates who apply for them. Those candidates are brave because, when they accept grants from the fund, they also agree to campaign spending limits. *When they filed their 2008 income taxes, the fewest number of taxpayers ever -- 4.5 percent -- used the $1 checkoff. That raised an anemic $181,316, or about what one of the campaigns of a major-party candidate for governor will spill next year. *Now, consider what inflation has done to the $181,316 the checkoff just raised. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, $1 in 2009 will buy 34 cents of goods and services, compared to the $1 of 1979. All of this has resurfaced in the Capitol as Democrats, who control both houses of the Legislature, search for ways to reinvent the clean-campaign fund as a source of untainted cash for future Supreme Court elections. Their bill even has a sound-bite name, the "Impartial Justice Act." (Footnote: There's more consensus on how to publicly finance Supreme Court campaigns than on campaign-finance changes for legislative races. When potential changes in funding legislative races is debated, 132 "experts" -- 99 in the Assembly and 33 in the Senate -- emerge, since every incumbent wants to make sure they keep their seat. But that's another column.) There are different theories on why Wisconsin's $1-for-clean-government checkoff system has collapsed. More taxpayers than ever hire someone to do their taxes, one theory goes, and they are simply telling those preparers to check the 'no' box. And, taxpayers may just be saying 'no' to protest all Capitol politicians, the taxes they approve and the spending items they vote for. But, with a long-term budget deficit still forecast, there's no cash to pay for the Impartial Justice Act. That's got legislative leaders thinking about this: What if we go to an "opt out" or "reverse checkoff" system, which would assume that all income taxpayers want to designate $1 for the clean-campaign fund? In other words, all taxpayers would give $1, unless they took an affirmative act -- checked the "no" box themselves, or told their tax preparers to do so -- to stop it. No one knows how an "opt out" or "reverse checkoff" system would work -- or, perhaps more importantly, how much taxpayer anger it would generate. Kevin Kennedy, Government Accountability Board executive director, said he couldn't name any other state with an "opt out" checkoff law. One guess is that only 30 percent of taxpayers might just say no to giving $1 to the clean-campaign fund. The remaining 70 percent could, intentionally or unintentionally, raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the clean-campaign fund. But there may be a political limit on how many changes in the tax code Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle can approve in a year. Because of the worst economic slump since the 1930s, they raised taxes on the richest 1 percent of taxpayers, capital-gains investors and businesses to pay for 2009-11 spending. Wary, angry taxpayers might not be thrilled to hear Capitol politicians tell them, "You will designate $1 of your income taxes for a clean-campaign fund, unless you tell us otherwise." --Walters, a senior producer at WisconsinEye, is the former Capitol bureau chief of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. |
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