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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2017 - 2018
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | October 3, 2017 04:14 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Harold A. English |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Stopping Reimbursement of Personal Loans by Candidates 30 Days After Election |
| Dear Fellow Legislators, I ask you to join me in co-sponsoring my legislation that will restrict Pennsylvania political candidates to any elected office from recovering their personal loans to a political campaign after 30 days from the certification of election for the position they ran for or the 30 days after the decision of any final appeals for the positon they ran for. This would stop reimbursement of personal loans after the election and the prescribed 30 day timeframe. Then candidate loans not reimbursed would become candidate donations to their own campaign account. Presently, a candidate or elected person could loan themselves money, raise donations and then reimburse themselves any and up to all personal advanced/loaned funds but would have to have enough raised. They can even raise funds post-election but only for the narrow timeframe and thus they would not be able to carry over loans to future years or future campaigns to get reimbursed for their personal loans to a position they may have won or lost but did not raise enough donated funds from others than their personal loan. The reimbursement for their loan would have a definite ending timeframe and not carry over. Thus, if a candidate advances $10,000.00 to themselves in an election, raises donations of $15,000.00 and has campaign expenses of $20,000.00, they would only be able to recover $5,000.00 of their loan after the 30 day deadline. The time limit would not allow candidates to roll over their loan to future campaigns. Their personal loan would be unrecoverable and the candidate’s actual loan would transform to a donation and no priority for payback or recovery ahead of other donations. Friends of XYZ can continue to accumulate donations that would continue to carry over to following year and the Candidate campaign account can collect post-election donations. Law to become effective in 60 days. I ask for your support by joining me in this effort to improve the quality of information, received by Pennsylvania citizens, about those running for elected office in the Commonwealth. Thank you, Hal |
Introduced as HB1976