Ohio lawmakers work to make reforms that will prevent secretive campaign accounts

Nearly two weeks after the biggest political scandal in state history broke, a pair of Ohio lawmakers, one Democrat and one Republican,  stepped forward with plans to change state law in an effort to prevent more corruption in the future.

The proposal would make it mandatory that currently secretive campaign accounts that legally do not have to reveal their donors would have to publicly report who is giving them money.

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Co-sponsor Rep. Gayle Manning said she is anxious to win passage of the reform plan to reveal who controls the “dark money” around the Statehouse. “Let’s find out. As we all know, if you can follow the money you have a better idea of what is going on and there are bad actors out there that can do evil things and we want to make sure that we don’t do that,” Manning said.

Manning said she had been working on the proposal long before former House Speaker Larry Householder was indicted by a federal grand jury in a $60 million bribery and racketeering scheme.

When the FBI investigation went public with its case against Householder, Manning teamed up with Rep. Jessica Miranda, D- Forest Park. Miranda said Monday the timing is right for a comprehensive reform law.

“It is time to rein in the wild, wild west of dark money spending here in Ohio. I’m very happy to get to work on this bill with my colleagues and hopefully to make it the best legislation it can be,” Miranda said.

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The chief elections officer of the state, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said the state would likely not be able to outlaw dark money groups altogether, but would be able to shine the light of day on them by requiring disclosure of donors.

The groups apparently would still be able to collect cash without any limits on contributions. LaRose Monday floated the possibility of requiring dark money TV ads to carry the names of their top three donors so that the public would know who was paying for the commercials.

“This idea, that anonymous, unaccountable money can be used to influence the politics or our state is corrupting, its damaging. It damages the public trust. It damages the political  discourse in our state and it is something we have to address,” LaRose said.

LaRose, Miranda and Manning expressed optimism that they could get hearings in the House of Representatives and a shot at passing the plan before the end of the year.

Cox Media Group