It has been submitted as a rulemaking petition twice since 2011, garnered 1.2 million comment letters, sparked a superhero-themed ad campaign, and is the subject of a current lawsuit. The latest push to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to act on a largely ignored demand that companies disclose political contributions and spending on lobbyists: pressure from former commissioners.
“The Commission’s inaction is inexplicable,” William Henry Donaldson and Arthur Levitt, former chairmen, and Bevis Longstreth, a former commissioner, wrote in a letter delivered to current SEC Chair Mary Jo White on Wednesday. “Its failure to act offends not only us, who are alumni of this agency struggling to retain our deep pride of association, but investors and the professionals who serve them. And it flies in the face of the primary mission of the Commission, which has since 1934 been the protection of investors. To use a metaphor, mandatory disclosure of corporate political activities should be a ‘slam dunk’ for the Commission.”
