Daniel Weiner and Brent Ferguson have written this oped for the Milwaukee Journal-Seninel:

SB 292 breaks sharply from Wisconsin’s tradition of openness and transparency, allowing big donors to influence government without public scrutiny. Current law requires all outside groups (such as super PACs) that raise or spend over $300 for political purposes to register and report their spending. Under the proposed law, in most cases only groups whose “major purpose” is to produce ads that explicitly ask viewers to vote for or against a candidate would be required to register and report their spending.

 And who gets to decide a group’s major purpose? Why, the group itself. According to SB 292, a group’s “major purpose” is determined by its own organizational documents or statements to the government. It will be child’s play for political operatives to get around these transparency protections.

Even if this were not the case, limiting disclosure to groups that run ads explicitly asking viewers to vote for or against a candidate means that the vast majority of super PAC and other outside spending will stay in the shadows.