Tomorrow, the state Senate could vote to allow cities to use your tax dollars for the personal use of politicians.  Below is my latest Carolina Beat on the issue:

Scandal is running rampant in Raleigh. North
Carolinians are struggling to pay their bills. Now the state Senate is
expected to vote on a bill, House Bill 120, which would allow city
council members to take your tax dollars and use them for their own
personal purposes. Specifically, the money would be used to fund
political campaigns.

The primary sponsor and champion of this political welfare bill is Rep.
Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland. Amazingly, Glazier and like-minded
politicians allege that these taxpayer-financed campaign programs would
improve the public?s confidence in government.

Your hard-earned property tax dollars and other local taxes would be
used to help politicians. Instead of paying off debts, you would be
forced to pay for city politicians? advertisements.

One of the biggest problems of taxpayer-financed campaigns is compelled
speech. Taxpayers are forced to support candidates and speech they
oppose. If a candidate wanted to raise city taxes, you would be forced
to support that candidate financially even if you opposed higher taxes.

These taxpayer-financed systems also are incumbency protection schemes.
For example, assume Candidate A decides against taking taxpayer dollars
for her campaign. (I will refer to her as a traditional candidate.)
Candidate B decides to take taxpayer dollars. (I will refer to her as a
political welfare candidate.)

If Candidate A spends $5,000 beyond a threshold amount of money, $5,000
in ?matching funds? would be provided to Candidate B. The whole point
is to ensure that traditional candidates can?t spend more than the
political welfare candidates.

When funding is equalized, it benefits incumbent candidates. There are
many advantages to incumbency, such as name recognition, so it often
requires additional money for a challenger to overcome these built-in
advantages. When challengers can?t spend more than incumbents, they are
far less likely to win.

For centuries, politicians have raised money to help them run for
office. This allows citizens to decide voluntarily whether they want to
support candidates. Now some politicians want to get rid of our
voluntarily system and instead force everyone to support political
welfare candidates.

Proponents argue that taxpayer-financed systems protect against the
influence of wealthy special interests. However, they don?t mention
that existing laws already cap how much money individual donors can
contribute to campaigns.

Proponents don?t mention that taxpayer-financed systems clearly are
unconstitutional after the June 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Davis v. Federal Election Commission.

In very simple terms, the Supreme Court in Davis
held that the government couldn?t penalize a candidate for spending
beyond a threshold amount of money because it unconstitutionally
burdened his free speech rights.

This is exactly what North Carolina?s taxpayer-financed systems do.
When a candidate spends beyond a threshold level, matching funds are
provided to the opposition. In fact, the penalties in North Carolina
are far worse than those considered in Davis.

Since Davis,
legal experts such as former FEC chairman Bradley Smith have explained
that these systems would very likely be unconstitutional. The New
Jersey legislature decided against these taxpayer-financed systems
after its legislative counsel warned that matching funds would most
likely be found unconstitutional.

Proponents simply don?t care whether taxpayer financing is
constitutional ? they will ignore their oaths to the state and federal
constitutions and wait for the courts to force them to get rid of their
taxpayer-financed systems.

For years, North Carolina has listened to ?reformers? who have created
excessive campaign finance regulations, restricted free speech through
contribution limits, crafted incoherent lobbying laws that discourage
political participation, and advanced other policies that blame
citizens while protecting the ?innocent? politicians. Now they want to
force citizens, from the poor to the wealthy, to pay local politicians
money for their personal use.

How have their reforms worked for North Carolina? The state
government?s corruption is at an all-time high. The state government
has become a joke to the rest of the country ? even Illinois is
laughing. It?s time to ignore these ?reformers? who think it?s for the
?greater good? when government unethically restricts speech and forces
taxpayers to subsidize politicians. A good place to start ignoring them
is by shooting down House Bill 120.