Oregon is one of five states where basically anything goes in campaign finance. There are no limits on what a candidate can accept from a corporation, an individual, a political group or a union.

In this short session, legislators, labor and business groups have been working quickly to try to pass some sort of campaign finance law to head off a battle between two campaign finance ballot measures in November. But their remedy, House Bill 4024, has some serious ills of its own.

If candidates are still getting six-figure checks in Oregon, it wouldn’t be much of a campaign finance reform.

If minor parties can only give half as much to candidates as to major parties, it wouldn’t be a very fair campaign finance reform.

If $25,000 can be given to a multi-candidate committee and there is not much of a limit on multi-candidate committees, it would not be much of a campaign finance reform.

If organizations handing out donations can be nominally controlled by a different individual but the funding can still come from the same source, it would not be much of a campaign finance reform.

And there are more flaws than that in HB 4024. Check out Dan Meek’s testimony at tinyurl.com/Meektestimony. He identified those others, as well.

For example, HB 4024 allows candidates of major parties twice the contributions as candidates of minor parties.

“HB 4024’s contribution limits are per ‘election,’ with the official primary and general elections apparently considered to be separate,” Meek’s report states. “Since minor parties in Oregon are not allowed to have official primary elections, supporters of their candidates can contribute only once up to the contribution limits. But others can apparently contribute to any major party candidate up to the contribution limits twice, once for the primary and again for the general election.”

Legislators could pass the bill and tweak it over the years to try to improve it. But they should at least first try to make the loopholes tighter.

The critical loophole that no Oregon bill can hope to control is independent expenditures. The U.S. Supreme Court held 5-4 in the Citizens United decision that those cannot be limited by government. So limits Oregon puts in place — whether they be well designed or poorly designed — may increase the strength of independent expenditures.