California Clean Money Action Fund Endorses "Voters' Right to Know Act"

CULVER CITY, CA -- The California Clean Money Action Fund announced its support of the Voters' Right to Know Act, a statewide ballot measure to give voters the information they need by requiring significantly greater transparency in political campaign spending. It will appear on the November 2016 ballot and establish California as a national model for campaign finance disclosure.

"We are tremendously excited to help qualify and pass the Voters' Right to Know Act by partnering with Californians for the Right to Know, " said Trent Lange, President of the California Clean Money Action Fund. "Among its other game-changing provisions, the initiative has requirements consistent with the California DISCLOSE Act to make political ads clearly disclose their true funders so voters aren't deceived about who really paid for them."

The proponent of the Voters' Right to Know Act is Jim Heerwagen, advisor to startups and member of several non-profit boards, and a major funder of Californians for the Right to Know. Principal authors are Bob Stern, a principal co-author of the Political Reform Act of 1974, and Gary Winuk, Chief of the Enforcement Division at the Fair Political Practices Commission from 2009-2015.

The Voters' Right to Know Act includes a first-in-the-nation state constitutional right to disclosure. Other watershed provisions will modernize campaign finance and state lobbying information systems to provide machine readable access to current data, and to include data on local government. The act also requires government contract lobbyists to register, bans gifts from lobbyists and their clients, and restricts revolving-door job offers to elected officials for two years.

Like the California DISCLOSE Act, currently in the legislature as AB 700 authored by Assemblymembers Jimmy Gomez and Marc Levine and sponsored by the California Clean Money Campaign, the Voters' Right to Know Act requires the top funders of political ads to be clearly shown on the ads themselves. Television ads by outside groups about ballot measures or candidates must show their top three funders in large legible type on a solid black background. No more fine print disclosures.

Similarly clear rules apply to radio ads, print ads, mass mailers, online ads, and robocalls. Equally important are earmarking and tracing rules so that ads will display the names of the actual funders instead of misleading names, even if they try to hide behind multiple layers of organizations.

"Clean Money volunteers will be out in force across California to help qualify the Voters' Right to Know Act to implement these crucial and long sought after disclosure rules," said Nancy Neff, a volunteer regional coordinator for the California Clean Money Action Fund. "People are tired of being deceived about who pays for political ads, so we know they'll be eager to sign petitions to qualify the most sweeping political reform in California since the Watergate era."

Californians are demanding such commonsense and truthful disclosure of ad funders, with more than 100,000 people signing petitions for the California DISCLOSE Act and more than 400 organizations and leaders endorsing it.

The California Clean Money Action Fund will lead a field campaign to help qualify and pass the ballot measure by using its volunteer Action Groups across the state to organize the huge coalition of thousands of volunteers, hundreds of organizations, and hundreds of thousands of citizens that already support this kind of game-changing disclosure on political ads.

"We're very happy to be partnering with the California Clean Money Action Fund to qualify the Voters' Right to Know Act", said Jim Heerwagen, the measure's proponent and a major funder of Californians for the Right to Know. "Citizens have a fundamental right to know the true sources of political spending, and with the help of Clean Money volunteers and other organizations and citizens across the state, the Voters' Right to Know Act is going to give them that right."

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The California Clean Money Action Fund is a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(4) organization that is the political advocacy arm of the 501(c)(3) California Clean Money Campaign. The California Clean Money Action Fund has been fighting for legislation and ballot measures to limit the undue influence of Big Money in California politics since 2006. All our support comes from individuals and non-profit foundations, with no funding from corporations or unions.