The conversation about campaign finance reform was revived at a two-day conference at the Hyatt Regency last week.
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley promised that his government had "the will" to propose legislation to deal with the issue before the next general election.
It was only the most recent episode in a long-running series of calls for campaign finance reform and it certainly wasn't the first to point out the obvious discrepancy between the sums of money that are supposed to be in play for a local election and the hundreds of millions of dollars that actually get spent.
In August 2013, President Anthony Carmona encouraged the elected representatives of T&T to engage the issue of campaign finance reform at the ceremonial opening of Parliament. That didn't happen.
Former chairman of the Elections and Boundaries Commission Norbert Masson called for urgent attention to be paid to the matter in October 2014, after political analyst Derek Ramsamooj estimated that $330 million would be spent on the 2015 general election.
The massive capital injection that has driven the last three elections remains steadfastly without any declared source or financial trail for any party in T&T.
That's a remarkable fact for a country that insists that individuals depositing more than $90,000 into a bank account must provide a source of funds disclosure to explain where the money has come from. For personal accounts the threshold is even lower, at $60,000.
The legal cap of $50,000 on campaign spending by candidates under the Representation of the People Act has become totally irrelevant over the last three general election campaigns.
The law does not set limits on the spending of political parties on general campaigning.
There is, quite simply, serious and staggering sums of money being spent in the electoral process and it will take significant effort to change what has become the status quo for getting the attention of a fickle public in the local electoral process.
Anticipating a lack of interest in initiating the process, Independent Senator Helen Drayton piloted a private motion in November 2013 calling for the registration of political parties, accounting and transparency in financing and definitions of permissible and impermissible donors.
"When some campaign donors give money to political parties," Mrs Drayton told the Senate on November 26, 2013, "it is seen as an investment, buying access to decision making."
Lorraine Rostant, president of the Advertising Agencies Association put numbers to the traditional advertising spending of political parties in the election of September 07, 2015.
A total of $157 million was spent by political parties on traditional media, $112 million of which was spent by the UNC/PP alone. This figure did not include spending on social media, political meetings, billboards, jerseys, flyers, giveaways or telemarketing.
The ongoing talk about campaign finance reform must be turned into action and there's no better time than now.
Recent election have made it clear that spending hundreds of millions of dollars with no matching political commitment to bringing transparency and accountability to a process which is now deeply suspect is simply untenable.
Dr Rowley must do more than promise to muster the political will to meet this challenge.
He must demonstrate, through concrete plans and real world timelines, that he also intends to forge a way.