Common Cause Maryland

Welcome to Common Cause Maryland!


Common Cause Maryland is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to restoring the core values of American democracy, reinventing an open, honest and accountable government capable of solving today’s challenges to the public interest, and empowering ordinary people to make their voices heard in a government that belongs to them. Since its founding in 1974, Common Cause Maryland has been one of the state’s most effective watchdog groups and has played a leading role in the passage of major reforms at the state and local levels.  


Legislative Success in 2012

Ethics Reforms

Passed - Online Disclosure of Ethics Forms

In the final minutes of the 2012 session, after a long and hard fought struggle to reform Maryland’s antiquated and arcane system to access elected officials’ and appointed officials’ publicly disclosed financial data, Common Cause Maryland succeeded in its’ efforts to increase transparency, weed out conflicts of interests, and help bring Maryland into the 21st century of citizen oversight by creating an online system that allows citizens to access ethics and conflicts of interest forms filled with the Joint Ethics Committee. The legislation also establishes a working group that will continue to focus on reforming access to more detailed financial disclosure forms that can still only be accessed by a personal visit to Annapolis, triggering an alert of the researcher's name and home address to the government official concerned.


Passed - Removal from office

This year has provided an unfortunate reminder that elected officials break laws and in so, the public trust. However, a finding of guilty or pleading no contest to a crime did not prevent lawmakers from retaining their offices. To ensure the public can be confident of adequate, ethical and good faith representation from their elected officials, Common Cause helped guide a Maryland Constitutional Amendment thru the General Assembly that would remove an elected official from office once they plead guilty to a crime related to their office. 


Defeated - Roll Back of Local Ethics Reporting Requirement

Counties, municipalities and school boards advocated for legislation that would have reduced ethics reporting requirements for official in local jurisdictions. The legislation would have rolled back disclosure of financial and business interests to only those that “do business” with their county, municipality or school board.  Common Cause successfully fought back against this legislation because the “doing business with” standard reduces the ability of citizens to discover conflicts of interest and self-dealing by their public officials  

 

Campaign Financing

 

Passed – Employer and occupation reporting for political contributions

Unlike most states, campaign donations to Maryland’s elected officials has been opaque, in that there was no mechanism to encourage substantial donors to list their employer or occupation. This legislation will now require such employer/occupation disclosure for donations of $500 or more.   Therefore, thanks to work from Common Cause, Maryland citizens will for the first time be able to have access to the aggregate financial contributions of large businesses and professional groups.


Defeated - Voter ID legislation

Once again, Common Cause Maryland prevailed in our fight to block the disenfranchising Voter ID legislation, which has been championed around the country by groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This manufactured issue has gained ground in some states, but we pledge to remain committed in our efforts to protect Maryland citizens’ vote.

 

Civics

 

Passed  - Accountability for Civic Education 

Common Cause helped to spearhead a large coalition of educators, industry leaders, civic and cultural intuitions and students to successfully enact reforms that will hold school systems and the Maryland Department of Education accountable for teaching the social studies curriculum. The Governor fully funded these reforms in his supplemental budget.