I believe this is good policy. I have resisted partisan efforts in the past to kill a similar bill. Last year, two of my Republican colleagues and I voted to withdraw a similar measure from a committee where it had stalled. Politicians prefer that this information be kept hidden from the people, but I disagree. It is time to open the curtain and let the people know.
Citizens have a right to know who is putting up the big bucks into campaigns.
The politicians and lobbyists may not like this, but they forget the true owners of government are the people. Frusetta, whose campaign reports are currently done by hand, does not believe that political candidates or lobbyists will be inconvenienced by having to file these reports on the Internet. The people deserve a convenient way to see who is bank rolling political campaigns. Putting this information on the Internet accomplishes this goal. Just prior to the bill's passing in the Assembly, Frusetta held meetings with the bill's primary author, Senator Betty Karnette, in which he successfully negotiated out of the bill certain elements which threatened the measure's passage in the Legislature's lower house.