Rechanneling gifts: Legislators shift cash donations

Although 2007 was not an election year, special interests donated $827,000 in campaign funds to Utah legislators.

With no campaigns last year, lawmakers converted about a third of that cash to what appear to be personal or other uses that have little to do with campaigning, according to Deseret Morning News analysis of the 104 part-time legislators' campaign disclosure forms.

That included paying for new clothes, dry cleaning, car repairs, high-occupancy vehicle lane passes, passports, baby-sitting, travel, Utah Jazz games, parking tickets, wedding or birth gifts, concealed weapons permit classes, wages to a spouse for campaign work, repaying themselves tens of thousands of dollars in earlier campaign loans — and even paying themselves for lost income during the general session.

That conversion of campaign money for personal use came on top of the $250,000 in gifts that lobbyists reported giving lawmakers last year (about $2,400 per member). The Morning News analyzed those gifts earlier this month. They ranged from Utah Jazz tickets to college sports tickets, Billy Joel and Bon Jovi concerts, golf, meals and travel.

Matthew Burbank, chairman of the University of Utah's political science department, said that the main reason so many politicians raise so much money — year after year even if they don't have an election — "is because they can. Lobbyists are always willing to give, in part to keep up good relations" with a legislator.

While lawmakers insist that such money does not buy their votes, critics have long questioned whether it buys extra access for groups wanting to influence legislation.

While campaign finance reform bills have been introduced in the past, major reforms continue to die. No bill has yet been filed in the 2008 Legislature that would curtail the unregulated fundraising and spending of legislative campaign cash.

Meanwhile, Utah continues to have one of the nation's most wide-open set of campaign laws.

State candidates can raise campaign money from anyone, in any amount. They can spend the money in any amount on any legal activity or purchase. The only requirement is disclosure — they must say where they got donations of more than $50 and list all their expenditures. It's legal to give campaign money to themselves, with the only requirement that they pay income taxes on the gifts.

Lawmakers came into their general session Monday, and during the 45-day session they can't raise any campaign funds. But they still fundraise the rest of the year, even in years in which they are not up for election.

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