I think it is an exaggeration to assume that because of holdover appointees the FEC is "not doing it's work." I offer that I have two clients that have just finished FEC audits from the 2008 elections and those were accomplished very professionally by their staff, even too much so, really. Presidential campaigns are paying record fines for alleged errors rooted out by the FEC. If anything, I think the FEC is still too regulatory.

When I was General Counsel of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1987 during the Reagan Administration, there were only three appointed members of the Commission out of five authorized commissioners. Reagan didn't think the public was getting all that much more from a five member commission as opposed to a three member commission, so he ignored the statute in not appointing more than three. Successive administrations also passed on filling all the slots for more than a decade. It did not affect product safety enforcement in any measureable way at all.

The measure of whether a Federal regulatory agency is getting the job done is its staff work, not the bickering on the commission about esoteric issues courts have already decided; and the FEC staff continues quite well to render what some consider petty tortures and fines, especially on grass roots PACs that don't have deep-pocketed union or corporate connections backing them. That is really the pity, namely, that the FEC rules favor unions, corporations, and deep pocketed interests playing in the electoral system, as they can afford to keep up with all the rules and repetitious disclosures; while the FEC otherwise presents a regulatory nightmare for small donation non-connected PACs without permanent staff, who are punished inordinately for essentially not being rich enough to afford to participate.

James V. Lacy

Confidentiality applies

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 14, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Craig Holman <holman@aol.com> wrote:

Colleagues:

Below is a link to an op-ed I published in today's Roll Call.

Holman: Obama Cannot Ignore the FEC Any Longer

By Craig Holman
Special to Roll Call
March 14, 2011, Midnight

This is getting ridiculous. After April, all but one of the six commissioners on the Federal Election Commission will be sitting with expired terms. Half the commission had their terms expire two years ago. Yet, there they sit — voting in an unprecedented number of 3-to-3 partisan deadlocks, preventing the elections agency from making decisions, offering advice or even enforcing the law.

The Federal Election Commission is broken. What should alarm us is that this is the agency that is supposed to monitor our elections and disclose who is funding which campaigns. Sadly, the FEC is barely fulfilling its mission — and the agency is closing its eyes just as we are entering the 2012 election cycle, which is likely to see spending hit more than $3 billion in the onslaught to buy the White House, fueled by secretive and unlimited corporate cash.

The single greatest reason the FEC is now unable to do its job is the ideological dogma of some of its members.

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/56_95/-204063-1.html

Craig Holman, Ph.D.
Government Affairs Lobbyist
Public Citizen
215 Pennsylvania Avenue NE
Washington, D.C. 20003
TEL: (202) 454-5182
CEL: (202) 905-7413
FAX: (202) 547-7392
Holman@aol.com

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