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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? e-edition | subscribe | newsletter | deals Home News Latest Stories White City firm probed for alleged 'scam' Get Up & Go: Nov. 16 Where to get help From loss, comes healing Emergency services Crime, Courts and Emergency Services Emergency services Woman in critical condition after being struck by car in Medford Emergency services Wrap Up: Phillips homicide Brookings man gets federal prison time for gun crime Politics and Elections Latest count shows Measure 92 supporters narrowing deficit Granlund cartoon: GOP wrecking balls Ballot measures played little role in mobilizing voters in state Senate race 'Euphoria' over pot initiative Oregon voters narrowly reject GMO labeling measure Education Good news for SOU: Enrollment's up Mom gives school lobby a makeover Crater students present play about Thoreau's night in jail Half of Oregon's community college enrollees need remedial classes Marketta Gregory: Stretch yourself for God Environment Birders sought for bird counts Grow 'em before you plant 'em Since You Asked: Biomass One makes steam-generated power Organic squash creates a bountiful harvest for ACCESS Prospect-area cow death likely not a wolf kill State News Kitzhaber embattled as he seeks fourth term Nation - World Obituaries Brian Basler Mullen Helen Marie Anderson Marie Louise T. 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A different kind of fish feed ... Detours planned while beams placed at new Phoenix exit ... Our View: Wyden's O&C bill may be the answer, or not ... A different kind of fish feed ... Detours planned while beams placed at new Phoenix exit ... ANOTHER VIEW Dana Milbank: The FEC is a poster child for a broken Washington MailTribune.com Writer Posted Oct. 12, 2014 @ 12:01 am Posted Oct. 12, 2014 @ 12:01 am » Social News If you were to seek out a poster child for all that is broken in Washington, you could find no better candidate than the Federal Election Commission. The agency that oversees our campaign-finance system, by law led by three Democratic and three Republican appointees, has come to a complete halt because of partisan deadlock. For five years, it has written virtually no significant regulations and done virtually no significant enforcement of election law. If you've been thinking of breaking federal election law, this would be an excellent time to do it, because the chance of being caught is close to nil. There is no cop on the beat. But last week, a Democratic commissioner took a bold gamble to change all this. She did it with a method that has become arcane in Washington: She offered a concession. She sided with the commission's three Republican members to break a logjam that has persisted for nearly five years — allowing the agency finally to draft rules consistent with the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. In return, the Democratic commissioner, Vice Chairman Ann Ravel, is expecting reciprocal concessions from her Republican colleagues. Whether Ravel gets those concessions will be a key test of whether the FEC, and compromise generally, can still work in modern Washington — or whether the GOP is so reflexive in opposition that there is no hope in even trying to negotiate. Republican commissioners were ebullient. "Today is a good day for the commission," said Caroline Hunter, hailing Ravel as "very cooperative and a pleasure to work with." Before Thursday's 4-2 vote, the chairman, Lee Goodman, proclaimed that "it will be a good day for the Constitution." But Ravel's olive branch to the Republicans brought complaints from campaign-finance-reform advocates, including Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub. "I'm sorry, I'm going to ruin the Kumbaya moment here," she told her colleagues. By keeping donor disclosure requirements (the top Democratic priority) out of the new regulations, she said, her colleagues were willing to "rig the game" and to encourage "this explosion in dark money." Weintraub told me later that she doesn't expect Ravel's gamble to pay off. "I haven't seen much reciprocation over the last number of years," she said. I share Weintraub's skepticism — and, for that matter, so does Ravel. "I don't know if I'm going to succeed," she told me, but "if we didn't do this we were never going to get anything done. ... I'm too old to have a job where I don't do anything. So what I'm hoping, and I don't see any other way to break the logjam, is to show good faith." Anything is worth a try. Public Citizen's Craig Holman, looking at FEC data, found that votes on enforcement actions dropped from 1,036 in 2003 to 135 in 2012 (the pattern has persisted in 2013 and 2014, he said). Of those, an increasing proportion (19 percent) are split votes along partisan lines. Offenders have increasingly used such split decisions to justify continuing their activities. The number of proposed audits and rules has similarly dried up. "There's no enforcement of anything of significance," Holman said. "Every group that goes before the FEC understands that this agency is going to deadlock on any enforcement actions, which means they will not get penalized." The problem can be traced back to Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who decides which Republicans get named to the commission. And he has made sure that they are uniformly hostile to campaign-finance restrictions, including requiring donor disclosure of big-money nonprofits, which have proliferated in campaigns in the wake of Citizens United. But the deadlocked FEC continues to protect the anonymity of those buying elections. Ravel secured a promise from the Republicans to have a hearing on disclosure in February, but with no guarantee of any action. And the Republican commissioners made their hostility to disclosure clear at Thursday's session. The FEC shouldn't "achieve through regulation that which could not be achieved through legislation," proclaimed Matthew Petersen, pointing to Congress' recent failure to pass tighter disclosure requirements. Hunter added righteously: "The FEC should not use rulemaking to circumvent the legislative process." Both ignored the fact that existing disclosure laws aren't being enforced by the FEC. It doesn't look as if Democrat Ravel's concession will be reciprocated, either in new disclosure rules or in increased enforcement. "I think it's going to be very difficult," she admitted. But her olive branch was still a worthy effort. At the very least, it will call the Republicans' bluff. Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank. 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