Disclosure bill and fund transfer bans are 3 good ideas

State Sen. Arthur Orr plans to sponsor legislation in the upcoming session that will provide voters with a wealth of new information about candidates.

Sen. Orr, R-Decatur, and state Rep. Mike Ball, R-Huntsville, said they will sponsor bills that require all elected city, county and state officials and candidates for office to disclose personal connections with any government agency or relatives who work for the government. The bill would not prohibit such relationships.

“But the public ought to know and the public can make whatever judgment they want to make. This would shine the light of day on those relationships,” Sen. Orr said.

The package of bills also would ban the transfer of campaign contributions between political action committees and prohibit candidates from transferring funds from their own campaigns to other candidates.

All three of the bills are designed to provide voters with more information about candidates and interests to which they are beholden. As it stands now, the PAC-to-PAC shell game prevents voters from tracking the source of campaign contributions. A ban on campaign transfers among candidates would close a loophole around a PAC-to-PAC transfer ban.

Of course, similar measures have been proposed in the past, only to die in committee or, as last year in the Senate, be thwarted by a partisan political squabble that effectively shut down the session.

We would like to see these bills adopted early in the session that begins Feb. 5.

Otherwise, voters need to hold legislators’ feet to the fire for continuing to skirt accountability.