Bill De Blasio, a trustee of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS), says his office “will work with the investor community, particularly through entities like the Council of Institutional Investors, to build a national shareholder movement behind full corporate disclosure. But this is just the beginning. Going forward we will also seek to give shareholders a greater say in whether or not companies they invest in should engage in political spending, especially if it has no limits. We will support and applaud corporations that voluntarily empower shareholders by giving them greater access to and authority over campaign spending. And we will continue to shine a light on companies that resist these reforms.” (Transparency Can Curb Corporate Impact on Elections, The Nation, 2/1/2010)
Maybe Citizens United will unite us. We’d better do it fast though. Democracy is fast disappearing.
A hopeful missive from Bill De Blasio. The only problem here is that, so far, corporate political disclosure has had no effect on corporate political giving. The handful of corporations that have agreed to political disclosure are still giving. You can paint the Cadillac pink so you can see it better but that wont slow it down as it races down the highway. Leadership from the CII and activist investors along with some creative activism offers some hope. But a call for corporate transparency alone is a grossly inadequate response to this explosive problem.