Democracy Dollars

Democracy Dollars for Real Democracy

Modern political campaigns have become dominated by large donations from mega-donors like the Koch brothers and George Soros or large corporate interest driven political action committees and labor unions. Going where the money is has skewed the political agendas of both the left and right and eliminated the voices of everyday people politicians are supposedly elected to serve. 

Two Supreme Court decisions have enshrined these large, dark money donations into our constitutional landscape by making money into “protected” political speech. Those rulings probably will not be revisited, much less reversed, anytime soon. The challenge has become how to dilute the impact of the large donors by giving everyday working people something of value that can be solicited and won with a discussion about issue based platforms politicians run on and promise to enact.

Many working people now are disillusioned with politicians and the political process and believe their individual voices are not being heard by those beholden to large money donors. Many live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford even a modest political contribution. Those feeling disenfranchised stay away from the polls, feeling their voices no longer matter. Younger voters tend to not even bother to register.

The city of Seattle may have found a solution. The city came up with “Democracy Dollars.” It is simple, elegant, scalable to national proportions and completely constitutional. 

Seattle collects property taxes, as do all municipalities. City leaders decided to add a small amount to each property tax bill, about $11 on a $500,000 home, to fund a voucher program that started initially with Seattle city council and city attorney races. Each registered voter was then given four $25 vouchers to use on those races. Those running for those seats could opt into the voucher program or choose not to, relying instead upon the regular campaign finance rules. Those candidates who opted in had to agree to spend no more than $300,000 on the election. 

Seattle collected $3 million a year in property taxes to pay for the voucher program starting in 2016. Seattle residents spent $1.4 million in vouchers in the last election. The remaining balance will be carried forward for future election cycles. The program is set to expand to more races in coming years as the fund surplus grows. 

A recent study shows that only 8,200 residents gave money to Seattle city races in 2013. In 2016, more than 25,000 residents gave vouchers and money to candidates who ran in those same races. A younger more diverse electorate became involved politically with the implementation and growth of the voucher program. 

The voluntary nature of candidate participation makes the voucher program constitutional. Candidates cannot be forced into a public funded election system under current Supreme Court rulings, unless they agree to public funding for their campaigns.

The Democracy Dollar system scales up well to a national level. Two Yale Law professors wrote the outline in 2017. Given the numbers of registered voters, a voucher system could generate just about the same amount of aggregated individual donations as special interests pump into the system in large contributions. In 2012, all candidates for federal offices and their nominally “independent” supporter groups spent about $7 billion on their races. That went down to about $6.8 billion in federal races last year. With $100 vouchers, registered voters could pump $6.5 billion into the same races.

This year Rep. Ro Kanna, (D-CA) and former Senator Russ Feingold put together a federal solution called the Democracy Dollars Act. It provides 50 “Democracy Dollars” to every registered voter for use in federal elections, $25 for presidential elections, $15 for Senate races and $10 for House campaigns. 

These amounts seem small but when multiplied by millions of voters, the power of the PACs and dark money donors become diluted. Think about a fundraiser for 100 people where you can raise $2500 for a presidential candidate with the best issue based agenda. The system turns individual voters into someone the candidate has to convince in order to obtain that voter’s voucher support. 

If you want a democracy where each voter really has a voice, support Democracy Dollars voucher systems everywhere.

Keep Church out of Public Schools

Religious Education Belongs in Church

Vote to Keep Church and State Separate

It always amazes me when we have to fight the same fights over and over again.

Our middle daughter attended West Bend West High School in the early 1980s. While she was a student there, a number of West Bend evangelical Christian pastors petitioned the school board to add “scientific” creationism to the high school curriculum. The board held a meeting to discuss the proposal. Anticipating a large turn out and a heated debate, the meeting was held in the old Badger gym.

Over 200 people attended that meeting, including representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and professors of education and anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Over 50 people registered to speak at the meeting. Not one of the pastors who had signed the original petition spoke in support of their proposal. Most of those who spoke opposed the idea of bringing religion into the public school curriculum, including several Christian pastors who opined that religious teaching belonged in church schools, not public ones. I gave the board a copy of a recent federal court decision awarding significant monetary damages and attorney fees to parents whose children had been exposed to the kind of curriculum proposed here. In the end, the board voted by a slim majority to send the matter back to the board’s curriculum committee for further study where the proposal later died.

In the early 1990s, our youngest daughter was a student in the district schools. A group from the community brought up a proposal to add “intelligent design” origin theories into the science curriculum. All of the courts that had heard “intelligent design” cases up to that point ruled that it was just another name for the same creation theory the “scientific” creation cases barred from public schools in the past. Thankfully, the school board rejected this proposal, recognizing that the laws creating the wall between religious teaching and public education would expose the district to unnecessary litigation and expense.

Fast forward to this past Monday. The same basic fundamentalist Christian arguments reared up once again in board member Monte Schmiege’s comments during the discussion surrounding adoption of new science education standards for the district’s schools. Board member Joel Ongert correctly noted that Schmiege’s concerns were more properly applied to Sunday school classrooms than pubic school ones.

Schmiege noted that some scientific theories are based upon assumptions that can and, in some cases, should be examined and challenged if insufficiently supported. That idea does not open the door to challenges to assumptions underlying scientific theories based upon religious beliefs. If you want to challenge theoretical scientific assumptions, develop an alternative hypothesis, test it, test it again and report the factual findings that support your challenge to the assumption. Relying on ancient texts in dead languages translated to satisfy a 17th century church hierarchy has no part in a scientific discussion. In other words, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but not their own facts based upon those beliefs.

Schmiege’s comments exposed what has been evident in some of his public writings. In one, he opposes public education, is a strong proponent of allowing religious education in public schools and does not subscribe to the constitutional principles mandating separation of church and state.

Schmeige’s comments on Monday were supported by school board candidate Mary Weigand. Weigand also has a history of attempting to force her fundamentalist Christian views upon the community. About ten years ago, Weigand joined Ginny Maziarka in leading the fight attempting to ban certain books from the West Bend Community Library because the books’ same sex themes were offensive to their homophobic religious beliefs. Their challenges were ultimately unsuccessful when the library board voted unanimously to leave the books on the library shelves.

Weigand has for years promoted her beliefs that the earth is only 6,000 years old after being created as told in the biblical book of Genesis.  She created a booth setting forth her beliefs that man walked the earth with the dinosaurs after the creation and took it to county fairs around Wisconsin. Weigand has further taken her anti-science stances into our schools when she promoted abstinence only sex education in the face of established studies showing it to be ineffective in preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Monte Schmeige and Mary Weigand are running for seats on the West Bend School Board in the election on April 3^rd. Your vote for Chris Zwagart and Kurt Rebholz will show the community that religious education belongs in churches, not in public schools and that science should be left to scientists who use the accepted scientific method.

Waring Fincke is a retired attorney and serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled with a Sheboygan county non-profit agency.

Suppressing Dissent

Unconstitutional School Board Policies

Cannot Suppress Concerns

The outgoing leadership of the West Bend school board introduced two new policies on Monday that pretend to simply streamline how citizens, including district employees, can raise concerns with the school district. The combined policy shifts will concentrate power in the superintendent's office and severely limit what individual school board members can do when they are contacted with citizen concerns. They will fail to squelch dissent and criticism from those challenging the status quo.

The policies, if enacted, will clearly violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the statutory authority and responsibility of school board members and the statutory ability of the West Bend Education Association to raise staff concerns directly with school board members. They will severely limit the ability of individual teachers and other staff to raise concerns as well.

The new policy proposals are the next attempt to curtail, if not eliminate, teacher and public criticism of administration policy and procedures. They are clearly intended to handcuff the new board after the April election and limit those who might disagree with the administration.

The proposed policies essentially direct all complaints/concerns to be shifted away from the Board and into an internal complaint management system designed to bury anyone who might dare to speak up. The potential for discipline against staff members who might go outside this chain of command is clear.

There are several problems with this system.

Public schools are governmental agencies exercising the public trust to see to the education of all our children with tax dollars provided to make it so. The public elects the school board to oversee the process, set budgets, approve expenditures and a host of other duties. They are ultimately responsible to the electorate for their performance.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows all citizens to approach board members, individually and collectively, to "petition for the redress of grievances." This cannot legally be shifted away from the elected officials to an administrative functionary. Similarly, given their statutory oversight functions, individual board members have a duty to receive citizen suggestions and complaints and to investigate them in order to become fully informed and better able to perform their duties.

These two policy proposals also make some pretty glaring assumptions about the nature of complaints that may be brought. Certainly, there are some that could and should be resolved at the building supervisory level, like please fix my cracked classroom window. Concerns that involve board policy, budget, and other governance issues should not be referred in the first instance to the Superintendent, much less to lower level functionaries. Systemic concerns should go to the board directly and be put on the agenda for discussion in open public meetings, except where prohibited by law. That is what transparency looks like.

Finally, the staff complaint proposal ignores the constitutional reality that district employees are also citizens and entitled to the same level of access as everyone else to "petition" their elected officials. Those represented by a union, the WBEA, also have the legal right to address the board, individually and collectively, about concerns the union may have that cannot be denied by board policy. The litigation that will follow any attempt to discipline teachers for violating their policy will certainly cost the district thousands of dollars as it loses the latest attempt to squelch dissent battle.

Courts considering First Amendment cases look at any regulation or policy that might limit public access to elected officials with skepticism. If the new policies sweep protected activity and speech into their orbit along with properly limited activity and speech, they are considered “overbroad” and struck down. Limitations that infringe on protected speech and activity must do so in the least restrictive manner and be justified by a compelling governmental interest.

Representative democracy is a messy business. Making it harder for people to raise concerns with their elected officials and easier to discipline staff who dare to criticize is unacceptable. These policies strip too much power and accountability away from the school board and give too much power to the district administration to throttle criticism and dissent. They are classically “overbroad” under the First Amendment and should be rejected.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired attorney and Vice-Chair of the Democratic Party of Washington County.