NASHVILLE - Tennessee Senate Speaker Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, is accusing critics of his and House Speaker Cameron Sexton's campaign and ethics reform bill of peddling "blatant untruths" in a bid to derail "dark money" reporting provisions in the measure.
"The bill in question does not censor or otherwise curtail conservative activism or free speech in any way," McNally, the state's lieutenant governor, said Monday in a statement. "Anything conservative groups can do now, they can still do under this bill. The legislation does not restrict their activity at all. The only additional requirement is disclosure."
McNally's comments came with the National Rifle Association and several other groups criticizing portions of Senate Bill 1005 and its companion House Bill 1201 for potential effect on social welfare organizations organized under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(4), sometimes criticized as dark money because of less stringent disclosure requirements.
"SB 1005/HB 1201 is akin to efforts by states like California and New York to compel 501(c)(4)s to turn over their private donor information," Matt Herriman, state director of the NRA-ILA, also known as the Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement last week. "Disclosure of this type of information potentially can subject donors to unwarranted harassment."
McNally took aim at the assertion.
"It is amazing that various seemingly 'legitimate' groups are resorting to such disingenuous tactics to oppose it," McNally said. "Is it because they are spending so much that Tennesseans would be appalled if they knew? Or is it that they spend so little that they fear they would be exposed as political grifters working to enrich only themselves?"
As a young senator back in the late 1980s, McNally wore a wire for the FBI, helping expose public corruption and vote-buying related to the charitable bingo industry, which was controlled by professional gamblers. He also exposed bribery by some of the same interests in an effort to legalize horse-race betting.
The campaign finance and ethics bill was introduced by McNally and Sexton in part as a response to the ongoing federal investigation into several lawmakers' involvement with previously unknown political vendors and independent campaign expenditure groups during the 2020 campaign, as well as Tennessee taxpayer-funded constituent mail operations.
The probe has already drawn a guilty plea to a federal mail fraud charge from now-former Rep. Robin Smith, R-Hixson, a political consultant who admitted she took kickbacks for using her influence to vouch for a shady political vendor offering legislative constituent mail services. The charging document against Smith also cites the involvement of former House Speaker Glen Casada and his former chief of staff Cade Cothren in the scheme, although it doesn't cite them by name, only their former positions. Neither man has been charged.
Smith is now cooperating with the FBI and federal prosecutors as part of her plea agreement.
House bill provisions of the ethics bill include a requirement that the heads of political action committees provide a photo ID to the state Registry of Election Finance.
That's intended to address one of the issues in Tennessee's latest scandal. The federal document charging Smith states that Cothren secretly ran Phoenix Solutions LLC, a company that Cothren registered in New Mexico under the name "Matthew Phoenix."
During House debate last week, Rep. Sam Whitson, R-Franklin, who worked with Sexton on the bill, said the scandal exposed problems that needed to be addressed.
"We discovered there are parts of the Tennessee Code Annotated that need to be updated to ensure disclosure of campaign activities and ensure transparency of financial activities of organizations involved in state campaigns," Whitson said. "It's important to our democracy to hold bad actors accountable and to ensure our over-watch agencies are responsive to reports of violations of campaign laws or regulations."
"... the intent of House Bill 1201 is to increase public confidence and trust in the campaign process in terms of how campaigns are financed and ensure that elected officials and candidates are held accountable to the people of Tennessee rather than being accountable to the funded special interest groups that hide their funding activities with the help of our current campaign laws."
Provisions include:
- Reconfiguring the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance and the Tennessee Ethics Commission and the combined Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance, which staffs both panels. The respective House and Senate bills would add two new citizen members each to the registry and ethics commission panels, although they differ on where the members would come from.
- Requiring itemization of all campaign expenditures reported on long-form documents.
- Enhancing reporting by candidates and political committees with a requirement that they disclose contributions and expenditures during the final 10 days before an election.
- Adding members of the governor's cabinet to the list of people who cannot receive compensation for consulting services.
- The House version enhances disclosure of single-source incomes of $5,000 or more and requires disclosure of member-controlled PACS.
- Clarifying that state trial judges file annual statements of interest disclosures with the Ethics Commission.
- Requiring annual statement of interest disclosures be signed under penalty of perjury, which is not currently the case.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.