House Minority Rep. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, speaks during the West Virginia House of Delegates session on Tuesday, Feb. 17. On Friday, Hornbuckle said Senate Bill 640 “is at odds with transparency.” (Photo by Perry Bennett/West Virginia Legislative Photography)
A bill that would ban the public from accessing certain information about political donors could soon become law after the West Virginia House of Delegates passed it on Friday.
Senate Bill 640 would prevent the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office or any other government agency from publicly releasing information that some lawmakers say could be used by advocates to target political donors.
Lawmakers in the House of Representatives approved the amended legislation 78-17five members were absent and not entitled to vote. The bill was passed by the state Senate last week.
Eight members of the Republican supermajority voted against the bill on Friday, along with nine Democrats in the House of Representatives.
Under the proposed bill, the house numbers and street names of a campaign treasurer and political donor will be publicly blacked out.
Information about a donor’s employer or “affiliation with a major corporation” would also be withheld from public campaign finance reports. The proposed code defines affiliation with a huge corporation as the “entity” from which someone derives “the majority” of their income.
Existing law requires all such information to be archived and disclosed on campaign contribution forms when a donor contributes more than $250 during a single election cycle.
City and county information for donors and their general occupations – e.g. E.g., counselor, doctor, lawyer, teacher, etc. – would continue to be listed in the proposed code.
Under the bill, any government agency that publishes the identifying information must remove it within 10 business days of notification by the individual. If the information is not publicly redacted within this time period, the individual will be entitled to a civil penalty of $1,000 from the agency responsible for the publication.
Any state or local official or employee who “knowingly and willfully” publicly releases the identifiable information about a government agency could also be charged with a misdemeanor. Under the law, they could face a fine of up to $1,000 and/or a prison sentence of up to one year.
The House agreed a change On Thursday, the bill was amended to also black out treasurer addresses in campaign finance reports. This language was previously changed in the House version of the same bill. House Bill 5066.
The committee also voted against it a change by Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, on Thursday, which would have eliminated provisions requiring a donor’s “principal business affiliation” to be redacted.
Proponents of the bill — including its sponsor, Sen. Mike Azinger, R-Wood — have said it is intended to prevent political donors from being “doxxed” by members of the public who may disagree with a politician’s viewpoints.
During discussion in the House of Representatives on Friday, Del. JB Akers, R-Kanawha, said the bill would provide a “little bit of extra protection” to people who donate to political campaigns. He said people who donate to campaigns need not fear that their employers will be “harassed” because of their personal beliefs or their employers’ political support.
“We’re just going to provide the donor with a little bit of workplace protection so that their employer isn’t being harassed and their job isn’t potentially at risk so that they can donate and exercise their First Amendment rights,” Akers said. “It’s easy enough to find people, but this just provides a little bit of extra protection so that the people who aren’t running for office, the people who aren’t in this building, the people who just want to get involved, get a little bit of extra protection. That’s all.”
While they generally agreed that keeping home addresses confidential was understandable, House Democrats expressed concerns that keeping information about a donor’s employer secret from the public would have negative consequences.
“Just completely deleting all employment information (for donors) — I think that’s bad on its face and antithetical to transparency,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Sean Hornbuckle told Minorbuckle. “We’re going backwards. This allows more money to be funneled into politics and makes it harder to track down and keep it out of the public’s hands. I feel like that’s very bad for the people of West Virginia.”
Del. Rep. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, said it’s useful to know a donor’s employer to ensure compliance with campaign finance laws.
Under the proposed legislation, the Secretary of State’s office will continue to receive information on campaign finance reports, but they will be redacted before publication. Pushkin said it is often the public who gets caught when something needs to be investigated or is not done legally.
If this bill becomes law, he continued, those protections will be lost.
“I want the public to see (an employer’s information). I want the press to be able to see it, because that’s often how things are revealed,” Pushkin said. “We can’t always rely on the government to police itself, and that’s why we’ve had these laws in place for so long. They’ve worked for years. I don’t know why we’re changing them now.”
The amended version of SB 640 will now be sent back to the Senate, where lawmakers there will vote on the changes made to it in the House of Representatives. If the Senate approves the bill without further changes, it will be sent to Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s desk for his signature.
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