What’s the price of justice? Over the last decade, state supreme court candidates raised over $200 million for their elections, two-and-a-half times the $83 million they raised during 1990-1999, according to newly released report. The need to raise ever-increasing amounts of money prompted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to warn of a real and growing “crisis of confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary” in her foreword to “The New Politics of Judicial Elections: 2000-2009.”

With big contributors appearing before the judges they helped elect -- the top 5 “super spenders” in 29 elections spent an average of $473,000 each -- it is no surprise that nearly half of state judges polled in 2001 agree that campaign donations influence judicial decisions. Three-quarters of American share their concerns.

We only know part of the money story. Millions of dollars have flowed into judicial elections “in ways crafted to avoid financial disclosure even as they seek to sway judicial contests,” according to the report. Challenges to campaign disclosure laws, the use of shell entities to funnel funds, and the recent decision in Citizens United to allow unlimited corporate expenditures all work to obscure the full picture.

The report’s authors -- Adam Skaggs and Jonathan Blitzer at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, James Sample of Hofstra University School of Law, Charlie Hall at Justice at Stake Campaign, and Linda Casey at National Institute on Money in State Politics -- have constructed an an incredible reference document that does a superior job of putting spending on state judicial elections in context. Don't miss their index of state supreme court TV advertisements and state-by-state contribution and expenditure profiles.

Although not part of the report, more on state-by-state and candidate-by-candidate contributions is available for download at TransparencyData.com, a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and the Center for Responsive Politics. On the site you can search by contributor, recipient, year, and many other factors to learn about the state of judicial elections in your state. Sample search results are available on the left.

Full disclosure: the Sunlight Foundation works with the three organizations that sponsored this report.

As the 2010 election cycle heats up, voters will be exposed to the usual bombardment of campaign ads—many of them negative, and many engaging in deception, distortion or half-truths—that have become a staple during election years.  What is likely to be new this year, thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case, is that a great many of those ads will be funded by corporate and union interests.  And, if Congress doesn’t act to ensure that there is a centralized government database disclosing information about who is paying for these ads, there is a significant risk that voters will have no idea who is shaping the debate and even influencing the outcome of the elections.

As I noted here, the Congressional response to the decision has been the introduction of the DISCLOSE Act. The provisions of that bill that aim to uncover the real money behind political ads are crucial to ensure that those who pay for the ads are accountable for what they say, and that voters have the ability to evaluate the messages they hear.

But, for those disclosures to be of the most value to the public, Congress should amend the DISCLOSE Act to require that the Federal Election Commission make that information available to the public online, in a searchable, sortable format, within 24 hours of receipt. Moreover, the FEC should be mandated to ensure that all of the disclosure information is available no later than this fall—when the 2010 election cycle will begin in earnest.

As it is written, the DISCLOSE Act would require the entities that make electioneering communications to disclose information about who is paying for those ads on their own websites.  That’s important, especially for shareholders or members of an organization who have a specific interest in an organization and want to know what type of political activity it is engaging in.  But, that system means that if someone wants to know how much money a particular industry sector is spending on independent political ads, they will have to engage in an ad hoc search of myriad websites to come up with a likely incomplete and unreliable result.

The DISCLOSE Act is missing a requirement for a single place that reporters, public interest groups, bloggers and every day citizens can go to find out the big picture about who is shaping the debate in elections. Right now, the FEC provides one-stop shopping so voters can find out about other election-related contributions and expenditures.  Congress should amend the DISCLOSE Act to similarly require that the FEC be home to timely, detailed and easily accessible political spending by corporations and unions.

Yesterday, Sen. John Ensign admitted to an affair with a campaign staffer who was also the wife of Ensign's administrative assistant. The couple ensnared in this torrid love triangle is Douglas Hampton, the administrative assistant, and Cynthia Hampton, an employee of Ensign's 2008 campaign and his Battle Born PAC. We know that Ensign revealed the affair because Douglas Hampton essentially blackmailed the senator. But, were the Hamptons receiving excessive pay from Ensign during the affair period? Politico looked at the official office payments to Douglas Hampton and found some numbers that look a bit... odd:

Douglas Hampton was paid about $101,000 in 2008 and $144,000 in 2007 as Ensign’s administrative assistant. But a financial disclosure form he filed in 2007 and 2008 – required for senior congressional staffers - showed only checking and savings account worth a maximum $30,000 combined.

A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent.

Now, you might immediately think that $144,000 for an administrative assistant is an absurd amount, but administrative assistant is often synonymous with chief of staff on the Hill. However, if you look to the reporting period of 4/1/2008 to 5/1/08:

Hampton was paid approximately $20,000 over this one month period. At the same time, Ensign hired a chief of staff, John Lopez, ostensibly to replace Hampton. If we are to assume that Hampton's annual salary is around $144,000 -- the cap on staffer salaries is around $160,000 -- then the $20,000 for one month ($240,000 in a year) would be far higher than his normal rate of pay. Over the four months of 2008 Hampton received $101,000, far more than his rate of pay for all of 2007.

There are a few points to be made here:

1) Staff salary reporting is often not aligned with the dates shown. If you look at Legistorm, you will see dates aligned with amounts. This is often not accurate, or includes bonuses with attribution.

2) Hampton could have collected his vacation pay, sick leave and a bonus at his termination, which would make his salary appear inflated.

3) Hampton could have stayed on to train Lopez in his new job. This would explain the overlap of two employees holding the same job.

(More: While writing this post, Politico released another report showing that the son of Douglas and Cynthia Hampton was on the payroll of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) while Ensign headed the organization. Also, this post about whether the Hamptons were pushed to extort Ensign due to a subprime mortgage on their house is worth a look too.)

Since these questions are integral to whether Hampton was received extra pay while Ensign was sleeping with his wife, there are important disclosure problems that need to be addressed. They are:

• The Senate does not disclose their office expenditures online in any format at all. The House is planning on disclosing online in August. The Senate has no plans.
• We could use better staff salary expenditure information so that the pay doesn't look so confusing. Sorry Hill staffers, I know you hate it, but you work for the government.
• Why is it that Senate campaigns do not disclose expenditures? Yet another failure due to the lack of electronic filing in the Senate. Due to the lack of electronic filing we can't -- easily -- find the precise amounts paid to Cynthia Hampton through Ensign's campaign committee, only his PAC.