VPAP’s Role
Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial
Mar 11, 2007
Normally, federal and state Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs) attract most of the attention during National Sunshine Week, which runs this year from today through March 17. Yet the week celebrates and calls attention to the public’s right to know, and FOIAs represent one part of the story. There are other tools citizens can use to stay informed about government and those who direct it — with one of special importance.
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If money is indeed the mother’s milk of politics, the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) stands as an important instrument to show voters which wet nurses keep elected members of Virginia’s legislative and executive branches fat and happy.
No matter what procedures so-called reformers invent, money always will find a way to saturate politics. Attempts to limit the importance of campaign cash often do not achieve their goal of purification. “Reforms” usually divert donations to some new (unregulated) vehicle that lawyers eagerly invent as soon as a new loophole becomes necessary. This winds up making the system less transparent, not more.
Virginia’s campaign finance laws recognize that fact. In the commonwealth, donors can give an unlimited amount of money to support a candi-date, but donations are made public so that the voters can factor into their decision-making the implications of who has given what to whom. Yet as the VPAP’s Web site explains, before the organization’s founding in 1997, “the Virginia system had a fundamental flaw: The public had no real way to learn what had been disclosed . . . .Though reports were available for inspection at the State Board of Elections in Richmond, it was virtually impossible to tease meaningful information from the thick documents.”
For example, if a group of residents in Bristol wanted to find out about the finances of those vying for the local House of Delegates seat pre-1997, they would have to either go to the State Board of Elections in Richmond or have copies of the documents sent to them from Central Virginia — neither of which was free — then parse through the documents to identify useful chunks of information. In the process, they might discover they needed another set of documents to satisfy a hunch or confirm a suspicion, and the process would begin again.
The goal of the VPAP’s founders — which has been met spectacularly — was to open campaign finance records electronically so as many Virginians as possible can know who stuffs checks into the accounts of those running for statewide office and the General Assembly. If a person has access to the Internet, he can log on to www.vpap.org and easily call up a wealth of information about who funds political campaigns. The electorate can find out, for instance, how much money a candidate has collected, how much remains on hand, and which individuals and industries have given the most to the pol in question. One can find such information for elections dating to the late 1990s.
The Web site also breaks down similar information about donors. This includes: the total amount given and to whom, what proportion of support goes to which party’s candidates, the industry in which the donor primarily works — and much more.
Poking around can teach the curious a lot about politics. For example the VPAP’s information provides context for battles during this past legislative session.
The future of payday lending set off a tussle during the Assembly’s 46 days in Richmond; payday lending’s sibling, the car-title loan, tried to gain a foothold. Some, including these pages, believe such loans are usurious and cause more harm to Virginians than good. The foes of payday lending comprised an interesting portfolio: It’s not many issues that pull together almost every editorial page in the state, the conservative Family Foundation, and the NAACP, which normally advances a left-of-center agenda — but ending payday lending did. Even the sponsor of the Payday Lending Act of 2002 called it a mistake.
So why did the session conclude with payday-lending reform on the Assembly’s cutting-room floor? Perhaps a slice of a story written by The Times-Dispatch’s Pamela Stallsmith and Jeff Schapiro offers an explanation: “Payday and car-title lenders gave a total of $180,000 to 110 of the state’s 140 lawmakers last year, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, with donations jumping almost sevenfold between the first and second half of the year” (emphasis added). Thanks to the VPAP such information is out there not only for Stallsmith and Schapiro, but for everyone.
During this session legislators also ended their flawed plan to deregulate the state’s electric utilities. When consumer advocates claim the Assembly passed a plan too favorable to the industry (a position with which the Editorial Page disagrees), they can point to this passage from a story by The Times-Dispatch’s Greg Edwards: “Dominion Virginia Power, the state’s largest utility serving two-thirds of Virginians, has been a generous contributor to Virginia House and Senate candidates, giving a total of $1.4 million since 1993. For 2006, the utility gave $130,727 to House candidates and $78,693 to State Senate candidates, according to the Virginia Public Access Project” (emphasis added).
Did money given by Dominion and payday lenders influence legislation designed to regulate their industries? That’s for voters to decide. The VPAP allows that decision to be based on cold, hard, unprocessed facts.
The VPAP receives financial support from, among other sources, the state’s newspapers — including The Times-Dispatch. The Web site also shows which politicians welcome, by their actions, the openness found in the VPAP. In 2006, all three statewide officials and 88 members of the Assembly provided personal donations to the VPAP. Two Richmond-area politicians deserve note: Gov. Kaine has been a major VPAP donor since at least his swearing in as lieutenant governor in 2002 — always grabbing a share of the top ranking among executive and legislative officeholders. Powhatan State Sen. John Watkins has given money to the VPAP every year since 2001; he’s the only lawmaker with such a long track record.
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Sunshine Week is about shining a light on all aspects of government. The FOIAs are great, but they aren’t everything. Sources such as the VPAP are also there to help keep the big boys honest.