All the Governors' Dark-Money Funds
Walker, Kasich, Snyder: These big-name governors embraced dark money to push their agendas. They could pay for it in 2014.
The 2014 election season means it's reckoning time for a trio of high-profile Republican governors elected four years ago at the height of the tea party movement. GOP governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio ran on ambitious pledges to create jobs and jump-start their states' economies. To meet those goals, score political points, and set themselves up for reelection, they launched their own versions of the dark-money nonprofit groups used by the Koch brothers' political network and the pro-Obama Organizing for Action. Now, these governors are learning that their dark-money tactics could become an election year liability.
Months after after winning his gubernatorial bid in 2010, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed his very first bill into law, replacing the state's development department with a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called JobsOhio that would "move at the speed of business."
Critics slam JobsOhio for a lack of transparency. Although nearly all of its revenue comes from state liquor profits, JobsOhio is exempt from public records laws, its annual disclosures to the Ohio Ethics Commission are confidential, and state ethics laws do not apply to it. When Ohio's state auditor, Republican Dave Yost, tried to audit JobsOhio, GOP state lawmakers passed legislation all but blocking his office from fully scrutinizing its books. (Because JobsOhio launched with state-appropriated money, Yost was allowed a single, limited audit, which raised several red flags.) In its first year, JobsOhio also pocketed nearly $7 million from five private donors, but the Ohio supreme court later ruled the group didn't have to release emails or records detailing the sources of those donations.
JobsOhio has faced charges of political favoritism and pay-to-play. Its board of directors, hand-picked by Kasich, includes multiple donors to Kasich's campaigns and employees of Kasich donors. The Ohio Ethics Commission also found that 9 of the 22 JobsOhio officials required to file financial disclosure statements in 2011 and 2012—including six of its nine board members—had potential financial conflicts such as holding financial stakes in companies that had received incentives from JobsOhio. Matt Englehart, a spokesman for JobsOhio, says the group's conflict of interest policies are "effective," that JobsOhio holds board members and staffers to "a high level of ethical conduct," and that the group is "held to a high level of accountability and reporting to what we do."
Continued at Link with stories of Walker and Snyder
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/scott-walker-john-kasich-rick-snyder-dark-money-reelection