Understanding the rules for political donations in Missouri — and ensuring adherence to state campaign finance and ethics rules — is a full-time job, and there’s a whole agency responsible for it. Until her retirement earlier this year, Liz Ziegler was executive director of the Missouri Ethics Commission — the governmental entity responsible for enforcing the state’s complicated slate of campaign finance and ethics laws. Prior to becoming executive director in 2018, Ziegler was the commission’s general counsel.
Keeping up with the changes in Missouri law has been a challenge.
In 2006, lawmakers removed campaign donation limits to candidates only to have the Missouri Supreme Court reinstate them a year later. In 2016, state voters approved a constitutional amendment that imposed a $2,600 contribution limit on candidates for statewide, legislative and judicial offices.
A bigger part of that 2016 law, Ziegler said, were the prohibitions imposed on candidates. “No longer could candidates receive direct contributions from corporations and unions, candidate committees could not give money to other candidate committees or political action committees,” she said.
“It has been a bit of a whirlwind,” explained Ziegler on the Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air. “It was really kind of back and forth.”
The Missouri Ethics Commission has also faced challenges this year because not enough commissioners have been able to meet to form a quorum. That rendered the commission unable to take actions on complaints.
For the full conversation with Liz Ziegler, including a discussion about how the 2016 law didn’t cap donations to political action committees, listen to the full St. Louis on the Air conversation on Apple Podcast, Spotify and YouTube, or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Ulaa Kuziez, Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
