Take Ads off Taxpayer Dime

If you left your house, watched tv, listened to the radio, or read the newspaper in the months prior to the last election, you probably saw a political ad that you paid for. No, I’m not just referring to donors to the Obama or McCain campaigns, but involuntary campaign “donations” that were taken in the form of taxes. How can this happen?
As I explained recently in the pages of the Albuquerque Journal, taxpayers funded the “yes” campaigns on behalf of the RailRunner and other statewide bond measures that increased property taxes statewide in an extremely tough economic time. This represents an extremely unfair advantage over grassroots and community groups like the Rio Grande Foundation that are concerned with out-of-control taxes and spending.
While government agencies looking for more money will always have the advantage of having many employees that get their paychecks from said agency, cutting off advertising money would at least create a fair election in which taxpayers’ own money are not used against them.