The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press are precious rights worth defending. That's why we should all be alarmed with how Council woman Karen Benker is using Longmont's campaign laws to intimidate people who express their opinions and report information critical of elected officials.

Last week Benker filed a complaint with the Longmont Election Committee against me because I was hired to investigate and write about some illegal activity Benker was involved with related to some city funds she helped get for a non-profit in town. The story was well documented with witnesses and city documents. (Click here to read the stories) But in the name of electioneering transparency, Benker thinks I'm obligated to tell the world who paid me to do this work.

I have to admit, in the past I thought it was a good goal for campaign giving to be transparent, but I'm having second thoughts. There are unintended consequences. Do we really have a right to know how our neighbor spends his money? Don't we generally consider that a privacy issue. So why have we changed our opinion when it comes to money spent on campaigns?

Former Longmont Mayor Julia Pirnak made a great point in an recent editorial reminding us that sometimes people have a legitimate reason to print their opinions anonymously. The Federalist Papers, which Thomas Jefferson said were "the best commentary on the principles of government which was ever written," were originally printed under the pseudonym "Publius." The authors obviously thought having their names attached to these writings would lessen their impact. But Longmont election law would have declared these writings illegal.

So why do Longmont residents feel the need to express their opinions about candidates anonymously? Council members in Longmont have the power to negatively impact business owners and developers who must come before the council to get approval for their business ventures. It is hard for some business owners to involve themselves publicly in elections, knowing the potential consequences to their livelihoods.

The irony is that Longmont's new election laws are not stopping people with lots of money from anonymously spending money to affect the elections. First they hire people like me, who report carefully researched articles in local blogs about candidates like Karen Benker. Then you have other organizations that are created like the Longmont Leadership group. They create a new organization with some public faces, but where does this organization get its money? Who knows? This law hasn't stopped anonymous giving at all. It has only intimidated the average Longmont resident from communicating their opinions about local politics. The campaign rules are complicated and in order to stay out of trouble, the common working people stay quiet and uninvolved. And that is just what people like Karen Benker want. She wants to intimidate those thinking about actively opposing her.

When the election commission invalidated Karen Benker claim that I violated Longmont's Campaign Law last night, they said what I did was legal because the article I published on a blog occurred 90 days before the election. This is true, but it leaves the impression that if the article was written within the 90 days, Karen Benker might have had a claim. The election commission should have explained to Karen Benker and the citizens of Longmont that news articles and opinions written for blogs are not considered campaign expenditures according to Longmont's electioneering laws.

Here is what the Longmont's law says about campaign expenditures: expenditures do not include: "News articles, editorial endorsements, opinion or commentary writings, or letters to the editor printed in a newspaper, magazine or other periodical not owned or controlled by a candidate or political party." I was paid to conduct research in order to write news articles and commentaries.

The Longmont law also requires all independent expenditures on campaigning over $100 to be reported to the city. But I didn't make any expenditures over $100 to publish these articles, so I'm not sure why Karen Benker filed this complaint against me. She is really after the person that paid me. She filed the complaint to intimidate me and others out there interested in expressing their opinions or reporting information that makes her look bad.

If political speech is free speech it must be unregulated. If I have to report to the city how much money I spend to express my free speech, that equates to regulating free speech. What government regulates, it ends up controlling. If we believe in free speech then we have to put up with speech we don't like and we have to trust the public has the wisdom to decipher truth from falsehood. Instead of complaining about my articles and running to the city to have me prosecuted, Benker should have defended herself based on the facts. She didn't even attempt to do that. I gave her an opportunity to explain herself before I published my articles, but she didn't answer my questions.

Our forefathers died to protect our freedom of the press because they believed in the power of the truth. We need to stand up and defend it once again. We need to renew our belief in its power and our trust in the public's ability to decipher fact from fiction. As the English poet John Milton famously said, "Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter." [Milton, "Areopagitica," 1644]