California DISCLOSE Act signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown to combat dark money

Fires, hur­ri­canes, the Trump-Cork­er spat, and the fate of the JCPOA with Iran dom­i­nat­ed the news this week­end. Amidst all of the bad news, though, there was some good news: Cal­i­for­nia has a tough new law that takes aim at dark mon­ey in pol­i­tics, thanks to Gov­er­nor Jer­ry Brown’s sig­na­ture.

SACRAMENTO, CA — Today, Gov­er­nor Jer­ry Brown signed into law the land­mark Cal­i­for­nia DISCLOSE Act (AB 249), the nation’s most com­pre­hen­sive elec­tion dis­clo­sure law.

“No more fine print,” said the bil­l’s author, Speak­er pro Tem Kevin Mullin. “Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers will now be able to make informed deci­sions, based on hon­est infor­ma­tion about who the true fun­ders are of cam­paign ads. This trans­paren­cy is crit­i­cal to our democ­ra­cy and I am proud that Cal­i­for­nia has tak­en this his­toric first step to shine the light on ‘dark mon­ey’. Hope­ful­ly this will encour­age oth­ers to fol­low suit.”

Assem­bly Bill 249, authored by Assem­bly­mem­bers Kevin Mullin (D‑San Mateo) and Marc Levine (D‑San Rafael), and spon­sored by the Cal­i­for­nia Clean Mon­ey Cam­paign, requires bal­lot mea­sure ads and inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture ads for or against can­di­dates to clear­ly and promi­nent­ly dis­close the iden­ti­ty of their top three fun­ders, and includes first-in-the-nation fol­low-the-mon­ey rules to make bal­lot mea­sure ads show their true funders.

“With the qui­et ges­ture of a sig­na­ture, Gov­er­nor Brown has loud­ly pro­claimed Cal­i­for­nia to be the nation­al leader on the most impor­tant issue of our era: tak­ing our democ­ra­cy back from the spe­cial inter­ests and restor­ing it to the peo­ple,” said Trent Lange, Pres­i­dent of the Cal­i­for­nia Clean Mon­ey Cam­paign, spon­sor of AB 249.

“Every Amer­i­can who cares about democ­ra­cy owes Gov­er­nor Brown, Assem­bly Speak­er pro Tem Kevin Mullin, and all the bold lead­ers in the Cal­i­for­nia Leg­is­la­ture of both par­ties who helped AB 249 pass an endur­ing debt of gratitude.”

Thanks to AB 249, it will no longer be pos­si­ble for big cor­po­ra­tions or oth­er mon­eyed inter­ests to con­ceal their iden­ti­ties using shell PACs in bal­lot mea­sure or inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture adver­tis­ing. This is a break­through worth celebrating.

NPI con­grat­u­lates the Cal­i­for­nia Clean Mon­ey Cam­paign and all the activists who worked tire­less­ly to make AB 249 a real­i­ty. This impor­tant new law will lead to fair­er elec­tions in the Gold­en State and hope­ful­ly inspire oth­er states (like Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, and Ida­ho) to fol­low suit by enact­ing sim­i­lar laws of their own.

At the begin­ning of this month, before Brown had act­ed on the bill, the San Jose Mer­cury News pub­lished an excel­lent sto­ry recap­ping how the bill made it through the Cal­i­for­nia Assem­bly and the Cal­i­for­nia Sen­ate despite sev­er­al obsta­cles, which end­ed with this well-writ­ten expla­na­tion of what AB 249 does:

What it would do: Assem­bly Bill 249, by Assem­bly­man Kevin Mullin, D‑San Mateo, pro­pos­es sweep­ing changes to dis­clo­sures on cam­paign ads. It would require the three largest con­trib­u­tors (of $50,000 or more) to be list­ed on bal­lot mea­sure ads or ads about can­di­dates by out­side groups.

A new look: On video and TV, the dis­clo­sures must appear against a sol­id black back­ground in a clear font that is not all-caps, fill the bot­tom third of the screen and stay up for a full five sec­onds. Each of the three major fun­ders’ names must appear on a sep­a­rate line. Dis­clo­sures on radio ads would need to be made with the same speed as the rest of the ad — no more speed-talkers.

Print, TV, video, radio, mass mail­ers, robo­calls: The bill, which Gov. Jer­ry Brown has yet to sign into law, would apply to print, online, TV and radio ads as well as mass mail­ers and robo­calls. Requires radio ads and robo­calls to name the two largest funders.

Here in Wash­ing­ton, Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Sen­a­tor Andy Bil­lig has spon­sored sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion sev­er­al times (which NPI has sup­port­ed), but it has regret­tably nev­er made it out of the Leg­is­la­ture. In 2018, though, it may have bet­ter prospects with a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate major­i­ty. NPI is com­mit­ted to work­ing with Sen­a­tor Bil­lig to ensure that Wash­ing­ton State takes action to com­bat dark mon­ey in politics.