Apparently, state lawmakers want even more unaccountable, special-interest money influencing local school board elections in Colorado. That’s the main takeaway from a bill recently passed by our legislature and signed into law last week by Gov. Jared Polis.

House Bill 1060 caps campaign contributions to school board candidates at $2,500 per donor in all 178 school districts in the state. If the donor is a “small donor committee” – in most instances, that means a labor union that bundles contributions from its members – it can give $25,000 to each candidate under the new law.

Yes, the carve-out for unions is yet another kiss blown to organized labor by ruling Democrats at the Capitol. It’s extra clout for the teacher unions that long have dominated school board races. But that’s an old, familiar story and almost beside the point nowadays.

What’s more noteworthy about HB 1060 – just like most other attempts at “campaign finance reform” that are intended to “get money out of politics” – is it inevitably will backfire. It offers the public the perception of curbing big donations but will in fact just reroute that money to the independent expenditure committees that increasingly dominate politics. They’re the ones that send out the nastiest mailers – but aren’t linked to individual candidates’ campaigns.

By one tally of last fall’s school board elections, fully two thirds of the $1.8 million spent on the races in the state’s largest school district, Denver, was by independent expenditure committees. That’s more than half of the $2.1 million spent on all school board races statewide.

Now, voters can expect the committees to claim an even larger share because candidates won’t be able to raise as much. The committees aren’t allowed to coordinate with the individual candidates they support, but that makes them even less accountable to the voting public.

When a candidate’s campaign pays for a smear against an opponent, the campaign has some explaining to do. But when an expenditure committee does the dirty work, the candidate and campaign are off the hook.

Unlike candidates, the committees can’t be reined in by lawmakers. Because they represent groups of private citizens rather than office seekers, the courts have held that the committees have a fairly unfettered First Amendment right to political expression in elections.

Which is why most proposals to do away with the presumably corrupting influence of money on politics only wind up drawing in more money. It just doesn’t go to the candidates themselves.

Sure, such campaign finance reform has a deceptive allure. Voters might be alarmed when informed that tens of thousands of dollars, or even more, were raised by a school board candidate. The public understandably fears what strings might be attached and demands a crackdown

But when the same money flows into the coffers of a third-party player like an independent expenditure committee, the public doesn’t associate it with the candidate – who nevertheless will benefit from the committee’s campaign message. That’s especially so when, as is often the case, the committee plays bad cop and slings mud at the candidate’s opponent. The mud flies under the radar before landing on its target.

The most effective campaign finance reform is an informed electorate. Heaping ever tighter contribution limits on candidates doesn’t stop the flow of money, it just redirects it around voters’ backs. Far better to let candidates raise what contributions they can and simply require them to disclose the donors and amounts. Then, let the voters decide.

Denver Gazette editorial board