01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 28, 2005

IF YOU THINK that citizens have a right to know about campaign contributions and lobbyist payments to public officials, here's some scary news from the Rhode Island House of Representatives. In the final hours of the 2005 legislative session, two dangerous bills are being rushed toward passage. Each would sabotage the public's ability to follow the money that sometimes drives government decision making.

On June 7, the House Finance Committee, with Democrats and Republicans unanimously voting together, approved legislation that would gut new lobbyist-disclosure requirements enacted only last year, in the wake of the scandals that brought down two state Senate leaders.

Less than two years ago, The Journal revealed that the pharmaceutical giant CVS had been making undisclosed large payments to then-Senate President William V. Irons (D.-East Providence) and then-Sen. John A. Celona (D.-North Providence). The payments were ostensibly for business purposes, yet they reeked of influence buying.

Celona followed Irons as chairman of the powerful Senate Committee on Commerce, Housing and Municipal Government, in which "pharmacy freedom-of-choice" legislation favored by Stop & Shop and Walgreen's had died year after year. The two competing pharmacies cried foul, and consumers were left to wonder how much they might have overpaid on prescriptions from CVS.

Common Cause drafted and lobbied for the legislation that now forces such payments into the open. The 2004 Lobbyist Disclosure Law required lobbyists and those who employ them to file public reports of "all money and anything of value" worth more than $250 that they pay to "any major state decision maker" in a calendar year.

The underlying goal was simple disclosure: Those who lobby for legislation or other government decisions must report payments to major state decision makers in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of state government. Whether or not payments are technically for lobbying, lobbyists and those who hire them must file annual public reports.

Nothing in the new law limits or bans such payments. It simply requires disclosure.

The counter came early in 2005, in legislation that would have exempted "the purchase or sale of goods or services or anything else of value in the ordinary course of business and for fair market value."

Common Cause rejected such a broad exemption, because we knew it would return to secrecy the financial transactions between special interests, lobbyists, and major decision makers in Rhode Island government.

Legislative staff argued that under an interpretation of the new law by the secretary of state, Cox Cable would be required to disclose all of its sales of Internet or phone services to public officials. In addition, lobbyists asserted, they couldn't report, because they didn't know which businesses belonged to "major state decision makers."

Common Cause offered simple, straightforward language to address these concerns, but nothing satisfied the House Finance Committee. During a 40-minute hearing on June 7, the committee members complained that the lobbyist-reporting requirements would drive lobbyists' business away from their law offices, restaurants, a liquor store, and a Christmas-tree farm.

With negotiations stalled, this year's amended bill (05-H 5477SubA, filed by House Majority Leader Gordon Fox [D.-Providence]) may yet surface on the House floor in the final hours of the legislative session. Its passage would nullify the lobbyist-disclosure requirements, which Mr. Fox sponsored only last year.

More ominously, last Thursday the state Senate rammed through a campaign-finance amendment that would dismantle a 2001 law -- also enacted in the wake of scandal -- that requires electronic filing and disclosure of campaign-finance reports.

The goal of that 2001 law was to let journalists and ordinary citizens analyze pertinent information via computer about who contributes to political candidates' coffers. Its passage put Rhode Island in the good company of 13 other states that now mandate electronic filing for campaigns that raise or spend specified threshold amounts.

Under the Rhode Island law, any campaign that raises or spends more than $5,000 in a year must file electronically. Thousands of Rhode Island campaign contributions are thus already available for public review (http://www.ricampaignfinance.com/RIPublic/Contributions.aspx).

Technical problems prompted the state Board of Elections to submit legislation to postpone the law's full implementation. But the Senate Judiciary Committee seized the moment and moved swiftly to destroy the mandatory online-filing system.

As approved by the full Senate on Thursday, the legislation (05-S 1123SubA, filed by Sen. Roger Badeau [D.-Woonsocket]) guts the requirement that candidates, political parties, and political-action committees "commence filing campaign-finance reports electronically." Instead, it says that they "may commence" filing electronically. Beyond making electronic data merely optional, it also entirely deletes a back-up filing requirement for campaigns that raise or spend more than $5,000 a year.

If enacted, this change would carry Rhode Island back to the bad old days when campaigns printed out thousands of pages of campaign documents from their computers and submitted them to the Board of Elections. Journalists and other citizens who sought to analyze those data were forced to spend hundreds of hours keypunching the numbers into their computers before they could start to connect the dots.

Pressure to strip away the mandatory filing requirement came most vocally from Senators Michael J. Damiani (D.-East Providence) and Joseph M. Polisena (D.-Johnston). The Senate leaders, although warned about the devastating impact, made no apparent effort to amend or delay this reactionary move.

Both 5477SubA and 1123SubA appear to offer only minor amendments, yet each would scuttle open-government requirements born of scandal. Each bill would slam the door on public access to vital information about money that flows from deep pockets to powerful public officials.

Only forceful calls to every member of Rhode Island's General Assembly will persuade lawmakers to protect tools that allow voters to follow the money. Amid the haste and heat of these final legislative days, only vocal constituents will persuade lawmakers to kill these bad bills.

H. Philip West Jr. is executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island.