Campaign fund issue affects all others

by J Scott Christianson, Columbia Daily Tribune Columnist

I wish someone had told me that there was no such office as Boone County dogcatcher before I wrote last week’s column. I mean, what am I going to do with 5,000 “Christianson for Dogcatcher” signs? Yes, I know you can turn them inside out and make garage sale signs out of them, but you can only have so many garage sales in your life!

All kidding aside, when you step back and look at the state of campaign financing, it seems like something that could only have been designed by a comedian.

And the current state of campaign financing would be funny — if it weren’t so sad. This summer our own Missouri Ethics Commission could have replaced “jumbo shrimp” as an example of an oxymoron on Wikipedia after it held a secret meeting — in direct violation of the open records law — to determine how to deal with the Missouri Supreme Court’s reinstatement of campaign contribution limits.

After being sued by the Missouri Republican Party for their breach of ethics and the law, commission members had a “do over” meeting to discuss the issue again. But this time, they couldn’t come to a decision so they decided to take time to develop a “natural” process to figure out how to make a decision. I am not making this up.

The ethics commission was not sufficiently acquainted with the issues of campaign financing to be able to make an informed decision on the matter even when considering it for a second time…