House passes bill to allow public campaign financing
March 4, 2010 ·
House passed a bill Wednesday that allows public financing of election campaigns.
Former Senate Judiciary Chairman Delegate Bill Wooton, D-Raleigh,
opposed the bill.
“This bill
is prompted by the obscenely amounts of spending that have occurred in recent
Supreme Court elections. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, this bill codifies the
amount of that spending. North Carolina has public
funding of its judicial elections. North
Carolina’s population is about 9.2 million
people; it’s more than five times as populous as West
Virginia. North
Carolina finances all of its judicial
elections with a total expenditure of about $1.4 million. This bills provides for
about $3.2 million. We’ve over-funded this bill,” Wooton said.
Delegate Patrick
Lane, R-Kanawha, was just as adamant in
favor of HB4130.
“Money and
politics is bad, but ladies and gentlemen money in the judiciary is abhorrent to
justice,” said Lane. “It is the appearance of impropriety that leads to the
feeling of those participants in the court cases that they are not getting a
fair shake when they come before the judiciary.”
The bill ultimately passed by a 67-30 vote.