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发信人: thinkker (andrew), 信区: CL
标题: Appeals Court Blocks FEC Records Release
发信站: 荔园晨风BBS站 (Sun Jun 29 13:36:26 2003), 站内信件

美国法律新闻
Appeals Court Blocks FEC Records Release
By SHARON THEIMER Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court on Friday blocked the Federal
Election Commission from releasing documents from its investigation
into political coordination between the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party,
upholding a lower court order.

Writing for the three-judge panel in Washington, Appeals Court Judge
David Tatel said releasing the documents would infringe on the
free-speech rights of the union and the party. The FEC could tailor its
disclosure policy to avoid such infringement, he wrote.

FEC spokesman Bob Biersack said it was too soon to say whether the
commission would appeal to the Supreme Court. Since the lower court
ruling, the FEC has been releasing only material the commission
produced and used in its decision-making, such as reports from its
general counsel and commissioners' statements, rather than documents that
came from those under investigation.

The FEC had appealed a December 2001 ruling by U.S. District Judge Gladys
Kessler barring the commission from releasing thousands of pages of
documents from its probe of 1996 election activity by the labor union and
the Democratic National Committee.

The AFL-CIO and the party sought to keep the documents secret. They
argued many of the records outlined proprietary information such as
campaign strategy, polling and other election activities, and that
revealing them to their political rivals and the public would chill the
ability of the two groups to participate effectively in politics.

"We think the court's emphasis on First Amendment considerations here was
just right," AFL-CIO attorney Larry Gold said. "We thought the
long-standing policy of dumping virtually the entire investigative file
in the public record was unfair and invited abuse by political
opponents filing complaints in order to access strategic information."

Campaign finance watchdog groups, including the nonpartisan Center for
Responsive Politics in Washington, had asked the appeals court to allow
the document release.

Larry Noble, executive director at the center, said the ruling will
make it harder for the public to determine whether the FEC has a
legitimate basis for dismissing complaints when it does. The commission
consists of three Democrats and three Republicans and often divides along
partisan lines in enforcement cases; it cannot take action unless
there are four votes.

"For many years, there's been a concern about the way the FEC enforces or
doesn't enforce the law," said Noble, a former FEC general counsel. "One
of the checks on the FEC has been the ability of the public to look at
the evidence before the agency, which this opinion now denies the
public."

The FEC investigated after Republicans filed a complaint accusing the
union of illegally spending up to $35 million to help Democratic
candidates and illegally coordinating ads and other campaign activities
with the Democratic Party.

The FEC concluded that the Democratic National Committee and the
AFL-CIO had closely coordinated their election activities but hadn't
broken the law. It cited a federal court ruling that set a stricter
standard for illegal coordination.

The Associated Press reported the contents of the investigation's
documents in July 2001. Among the coordinated activities, union
representatives served on state steering committees to help approve or
reject Democratic campaign plans.

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