HELENA, Mont. (AP) - A Montana lawmaker proposed Friday to dismantle the independent office that regulates and enforces the state’s campaign, ethics and lobbying laws and turn those duties over to elected officials.
Rep. Derek Skees, R-Kalispell, said the Office of the Commissioner of Political Practices has grown too partisan in recent years and is too powerful by allowing the commissioner to be prosecutor, judge and jury over allegations of campaign violations.
“This position can be corrupted by any party by the very nature of its totalitarian authority,” Skees told the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing on his bill.
The measure would transfer oversight of campaign reporting to the secretary of state’s office and enforcement of campaign and ethics laws to the attorney general. Both of those offices are run by elected officials who are subject to the campaign laws they would be regulating.
Evan Barrett, a Butte resident who was on the commission that came up with the structure of the commissioner of political practices in the post-Watergate era of 1975, said the system is working as it’s supposed to.
“We were trying to fix a system that was broken in campaign finance reporting and enforcement,” Barrett said. “We tried to design the law to take it out of partisan politics.”
The commissioner’s office has long been the focus of political wrangling. The commissioner is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate for a six-year term, but there have been four separate commissioners so far this decade. Accusations of partisan bias or misuse of the office have prevented the Senate from confirming a person from 2011 until the current commissioner, Jonathan Motl, took office in 2013 and was confirmed two years later.
Skees said Motl is the best example of what is wrong with the office. Skees said Motl, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, only goes after Republicans and has never settled a fine or filed a case against a Democrat for a campaign violation.
Motl denied that partisan politics enters into his or his staff’s work. “You do your best to apply the law to the facts that are given you and you don’t look at partisanship, you don’t look at the party,” Motl said.
It’s untrue that Motl’s office only goes after Republicans, he said. Between 2013 and 2015, Motl ruled for the Republican candidate over Democrat in eight of 10 cases when members of both parties were involved in a complaint.
The commissioner also ruled twice against Democratic candidates in complaints brought by an independent party and twice more against Democrats in which a complaint was brought by another Democrat.
The committee did not take action on the bill.
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