The federal agency responsible for enforcing federal campaign finance law will soon have too few members to officially make decisions, as the agency announced Aug. 26 that its vice chairman, Matthew Petersen, would be leaving at the end of the month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have served on the commission,\u201d said Petersen in a news release. \u201cThe work of a commissioner is challenging because it involves taking actions that impact the free speech rights of the American people. For this reason, I take satisfaction in having fulfilled my obligation to safeguard First Amendment interests while faithfully administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance laws.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FEC is designed to have six commissioners, who are appointed by the president and serve for six-year terms. But commissioners can serve far beyond that mark if no one is nominated to take up their seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By law, no more than three commissioners may be from the same political party and any official action taken by the commission requires four votes, including issuing new rules or voting on the outcome of an election finance investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Petersen\u2019s departure will drop the number of commissioners to three, making the agency effectively inoperable as the commission is incapable of passing any official actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really concerning, The FEC was set up as an independent agency after the Watergate scandal to enforce election law and to be the referee to blow the whistle on politicians that cheat. That referee has grown increasingly ineffectual, in part because of a number of systemic issues with the commission,\u201d said Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., in an interview with Federal Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith the loss of a quorum, we\u2019re going from having an ineffectual referee to a referee that\u2019s completely off the field.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kilmer has been working with other members of Congress to establish the Restoring Integrity to American Elections Act, which was included in the House\u2019s expansive For the People Act of 2019 and would make a number of changes designed to make the FEC more effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill would reduce the number of FEC commissioners from the current six to five, creating a quorum of three votes and mandating that at least one member of the commission is unaffiliated with any party. A blue ribbon commission would be created and tasked with finding qualified candidates from both parties or with no political affiliation to recommend to the president when a seat becomes vacant, and those approved by the Senate would only be allowed to serve for six years, with an optional one year extension if their seat is not filled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill would also prohibit politicians from serving on the commission and reform the investigative process to give the general counsel the authority to move a complaint into an investigation, rather than requiring commission sign-off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis came out of a bipartisan group in Congress called the Bipartisan Working Group,\u201d said Kilmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are Republican colleagues that are outraged by the fact that we have a federal agency that\u2019s not able to do anything, and that\u2019s not good for taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group invited a former chair of the FEC to talk about the operations of the commission, and members form both parties said that they would be interested in pursuing the reforms proposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese are among the issues that cause Congress to be held in low regard. When there is a clear problem here that is central to the integrity of American democracy, and it\u2019s bipartisan \u2026 and at this point the Senate has been nowheresville on this issue and I think that\u2019s a real problem,\u201d said Kilmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere seems to be a perspective by some that we shouldn\u2019t enforce the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those reforms, of course, would require the FEC to have nominees that are approved by the Senate to reestablish a quorum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Donald Trump has nominated James Trainor to take over Petersen\u2019s seat, but the nomination has been returned by the Senate twice due to inaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Kilmer, the only real solution to getting nominations made and confirmed is to increase the public profile of what the FEC does and why it will be inoperable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve traveled every nook and cranny of my district, and you know what I\u2019ve never heard anybody say? I\u2019ve never heard someone say, \u2018we should make it easier for politicians to cheat,\u2019\u201d said Kilmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have to elevate this issue because, generally speaking, Congress takes action when the American people demand it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FEC is not the only agency to lack sufficient presidentially appointed members. The Merit Systems Protection Board recently lost its last remaining member<\/a> and prior to that had been operating without a quorum<\/a> for nearly three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The federal commission tasked with enforcing election law will soon become effectively inoperable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":68135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":15,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[104,106,31,15,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2853],"class_list":["post-22962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acquisition-update","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-management","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"XZE765JDBZDAXK6CUYDU3LYUQA","arc_canonical_url":"\/management\/2019\/08\/29\/a-campaign-finance-referee-is-leaving-the-field\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n