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20 January 2012

Montana’s blogosphere should focus on fixing political practices

Erstwhile Commissioner of Political Practices Dave Gallik has his friends, and some are making themselves heard on Montana’s progressive blogs. They argue, without presenting convincing evidence, that CPP staffer Mary Baker is a Republican who set out to get rid of Gallik.

We may find out next week whether these allegations are true, but the partisan sniping exasperates me. Those who approach this from a partisan position — which party they belong to doesn’t matter — want a political practices commissioner who will give their party the benefit of the doubt and the opposition party the presumption of guilt. They want one of their own because they’re petrified that anyone else will screw their party’s candidates. Consequently, they also want — their fulsome assurances to the contrary notwithstanding — weak commissions on political practices.

That leads to guys like Gallick — a former legislator and PAC man — being appointed commissioner.

If the debate over this situation continues devolving into a partisan ruckus, political practices will escape reform once again.

We need to approach this mess from a good government perspective. My personal opinion, which differs from that of many of my acquaintances on the left and right, is that the commission’s most important work is not reviewing claims of wrongdoing — it’s managing campaign finance reports. Citizens who want to follow politics must be able to follow the money, and be able to follow it on a virtual realtime basis. Right now, citizens can’t do that: the system for managing those reports amounts to a quill pen and parchment system that a modern monastery would scorn.

(Gallik supported electronic reporting and was working hard for it, according to an editorial in the Helena Independent Record. There are hints the staff were resisting, although one wonders why: scanning paper reports, the current method, is a tedious job. Was there a dispute over how to convert to an electronic system? Were the staff promoting featherbedding? The details may come to light at the 27 January meeting of the legislature’s State Administration and Veteran’ Affairs interim committee.)

I hope my colleagues in Montana’s blogosphere will set aside the Gallik v Baker debate for now, and focus on modernizing our commission on political practices and shielding it from partisan mischief.