Clean money repo men.

• Author: Nichols, John
• Position: Political reform agency in Massachusetts has power to seize government-provided cars from corrupt politicians

Remember the old posters that read, "What if schools got all the money they needed and the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale?" How about this for a variation: What if politicians had to give up their official cars, office furniture, and prime parking spots to pay for clean campaigns?

Equally absurd, right? Not anymore. In Massachusetts this spring, campaign finance reformers won court authority to come for the cars, the furniture, and the prime parking spots that have long been the perks of political power on Boston's Beacon Hill.

"We have complete discretion to seize any property of the Commonwealth," announced John Bonifaz, a lawyer for the reformers. And within days, the seizures had begun. To kick things off, a pair of state-owned 2001 Ford Expedition sports utility vehicles and eleven 2002 Ford Taurus station wagons were put up for auction to the highest bidder at a raucous public sale in late April. As the cars were being dispatched, there was talk that the desk of the Massachusetts Speaker of the House, the leading obstructionist, would soon appear on the auction block.

How did campaign finance reformers become repo men?

Here's the short answer: In November 1998, Massachusetts voters passed a clean money law by a 2-to-1 margin. But the legislature refused to release the $23 million set aside to provide public funding for campaigns in statewide and legislative campaigns in Massachusetts this year. So the reformers sued, along with Warren Tolman, a Democrat seeking to win his party's nomination for governor. They thought they were on solid ground, since the state constitution says the Commonwealth must appropriate "such money as may be necessary to carry such law into effect."

But in a decision that even reformers described as "incredible," the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in January that the legislature was violating the Constitution by failing either to fund the "clean money" candidates or to repeal the law. "The current situation, in which the Clean Elections Law has not been repealed but no money has been appropriated to fund it, does more than disadvantage clean elections candidates," the ruling read. "It frustrates the will of the majority of the people who elected to provide an alternative, assertedly more democratic system of campaign financing for Massachusetts electoral offices than the current private financing scheme."

The court went a step further. It remanded the case to Justice Martha Sosman, who was charged with assuring that qualified candidates got the public...