Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 8, 1994                   TAG: 9403100024
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAMPAIGN FINANCE

Money makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around ... A mark, a yen, a buck or pound, a buck or pound, a buck or pound ... Money, money, money, money ... get a little, get a little, get a little, get a little ... That clinking, clanking, clunking sound can make the world go around."

OK, so it's also the lyrics for a Fred Ebb-John Cander song in the 1972 movie, "Cabaret." State legislators once again have called the tune: They want to keep unlimited contributions a'clinking, clanking, clunking their way for future re-election campaigns.

Just think - less than a month ago, campaign finance-reform legislation that would impose caps on gifts to statewide and assembly candidates was said to be one of the top priorities at the '94 session. Both the Senate and House passed bills that set modest limits on contributions. Lawmakers finally were showing an interest in reducing money's corrupting effects on politics.

Oh well. In the session's waning days, the legislature has returned to form, and loaded up the campaign-finance-reform bills with so many ifs, ands and buts that they've become campaign-finance-deform bills.

Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke, pushed, for instance, for an amendment that would excuse candidates from abiding by the contribution-limits if they happen to have opponents who make large gifts of their own money to their own campaigns. Bell said he was motivated by "fairness."

(Never mind that Democrat Granger Macfarlane of Roanoke, whom Bell ousted from the state Senate in 1991, might try to get the seat back from Bell next year. Macfarlane, a well-to-do businessman, has put large sums of his own money into his campaigns.)

If Bell and others really wanted fairness, they'd get behind the best way to ensure that wealthier candidates don't enjoy a lopsided advantage. That would be voluntary limits on campaign spending, tied to a system of limited public financing for state candidates.

Fairness? How about fairness for Virginia voters? Most can't afford the six-figure donations that permit a relatively few wealthy individuals to gain undue influence with elected leaders. Virginia is one of only a few states that still unabashedly invites the moneyed crowd to buy such clout by imposing no limits whatsoever on campaign gifts.

Money, money, money ... get a little, get a little, get a little, get a little."

A show-stopper in "Cabaret." But it's time lawmakers rewrote the lyrics - and we don't mean for "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia."

Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994