Time to fully fund clean elections

To the Editor;

Because of years of lawmakers raiding Maine’s Clean Election Fund for other purposes, the fund could run dry in the 2016 or 2018 election.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution. Legislators must return the most recently borrowed money — $1.7 million to the Clean Election Fund.

Since 2003, lawmakers have transferred more than $9 million out of the Clean Election Fund for use elsewhere in the state budget. It’s time to return that money to ensure the program that voters overwhelmingly support is solvent.

For the Clean Election Fund to run out of money in this or a future election cycle would be an insult to Maine people, especially after they just overwhelmingly reaffirmed their mandate on Maine’s first-in-the-nation Clean Election Act.

It’s time that lawmakers end the IOU’s and fully fund Maine’s Clean Election Fund.

John Albertini
Charleston