Re: Government Speech and Special Assessments

[Howard Wasserman]

Scarberry, Mark wrote: Government's ability to speak in the public debate must be limited to some extent when campaigns are involved. As I noted once before on this list, at one time the state of California was running ads suggesting that tobacco companies would lie to the voters who were being asked to decide referenda on various smoking related issues. I don't know where the funds for the ads came from, but this was very troubling to me. In the analogous context of a political campaign for public offices, there must be limits on the government's ability to campaign. Otherwise a party in power could perpetuate itself by voting to spend as much as was needed to defeat all opposition. I would agree as to candidate elections (in which the current officeholders could be using the government entity itself, and government moneys, to perpetuate thier positions of power), but not as to referena.  If the question before the electorate is the public policy that will prevail in the community, then the government (which we ordinarily entrust to make policy decisions and which always will be responsible for carrying out those decisions) should be involved in that conversation to the same degree (and with the same amounts of money) as everyone else.  I would not have been troubled by the California ads, although I would take momentary pause if (as in the recent California case) they were funded by assessments on the tobacco companies themselves. Howard Wasserman Florida International University College of Law