When Mississippi politicians are running for office, they often pledge transparency as if they mean it.
Next time you’re around such politicians, especially if they are legislators or running for the Legislature, you should ask them a few questions.
Ask them why the Mississippi Legislature exempts itself from the open records and open meetings laws it levies on all other divisions of state government, and why legislative leaders have even fought in court to keep proceedings involving a majority of a legislative chamber secret from the public.
Ask them why you cannot get on your phone or computer and easily search for who funds their campaign and by how much. Then ask them why you could go to any surrounding state (and nearly all others across the country) and easily and quickly find such information.
Then, ask the same for why you cannot easily, or sometimes at all, see who buys them expensive dinners, trips or gifts to influence their voting, or why there aren’t any prohibitions or limits on this as there are in other states.
Ask their thoughts on “gift laws,” or prohibition or limits on campaign donors getting massive government contracts from the people to whom they donate.
Ask them if they believe all the folks who lobby lawmakers even bother to register as lobbyists or report what they do to influence them.
Ask them why Mississippi government, state to local, provides so few public records online, or why agencies charge so much when they do cough up records.
Ask them why millions of dollars in out-of-state, secret-sourced “dark money” has been pouring into Mississippi elections in recent years, and what has been done to curb this.
READ MORE: Campaign finance transparency bill faces uphill battle in Mississippi Legislature
Ask them to explain what Mississippi’s so-called “ethics laws” actually prohibit, what penalties they carry and what authority the so-called “Ethics Commission” has. Ask them how we compare here to other states, such as Alabama, where government ethics laws are actually enforced and their ethics agency has some authority.
READ MORE: Does Mississippi have any campaign finance rules?
For that matter, ask them who or what agency in Mississippi enforces campaign finance, ethics or lobbying laws.
Ask them why Mississippi’s attorney general recently decreed Mississippi’s campaign finance laws and limits to be so jacked up, convoluted and contradictory as to be unenforceable or un-prosecutable. Ask why the head of the state’s ethics agency has described Mississippi campaign finance laws as “a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t fit.”
Ask them why, whenever even modest reforms such as campaign finance reporting requirements for politicians are proposed, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle act like their hair is on fire and line up to help kill it.
Ask them whether they believe Mississippi government is riddled with cronyism, nepotism or pay-to-play politics.
Then, finally, ask them whether they believe any of this might play a role in the historic and persistent government corruption that has often earned Mississippi the label of most corrupt state in the country.
READ MORE: Want to launder some money? Just use your Mississippi campaign account
