CTNJ/Opinion: Is the Citizens Election Program worth saving?

Susan Bigelow is an award-winning columnist and the founder of CTLocalPolitics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and their cats.

Once again, the Citizens Election Program is being threatened with defunding and, eventually, oblivion. Republicans hate the program, which provides public funding for campaigns, even though it allows their candidates to compete at the same level as the Democratic money machine. They raise bills every session calling for it to be dismantled. Now Republicans have eliminated the CEP in their budget proposal, citing the state’s total lack of money.

Democrats have been quick to defend the program. However, Senate minority leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, ripped Democrats for their hypocritical weakening of the program in 2013.

“If the Democrats were receptive to the reforms Republicans have proposed in the past to restore the CEP’s integrity, then I wouldn’t be suggesting cutting the program now,” Fasano said in a statement. “But what we have today has been completely stripped over the years by Democrats. Under a Republican governor Democrats supported a strict program. But as soon as a Democratic governor was in play, they exploited the rules so they could maximize the distribution of money.”

He’s right. They did.

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