Election Focus: Public Campaign Financing

Albany Patch recently posed nine questions, about challenges faced by the city, to the four City Council candidates up for election Nov. 2. See our full election guide here. Click each candidate's name to view a general Q&A completed in August. And come out Thursday for the first candidate forum of the election season.

Should Albany make changes to its approach to public campaign financing? (The city has no regulations about campaign financing. Until 2008, here's how it worked, according to the Berkeley Daily Planet: Candidates who operated under the ordinance were limited to contributions of $6,000 total and $250 per individual, with no more than 10 percent of their contributions coming from individuals or organizations outside of Albany. Candidates who chose not to operate under the limit ordinance could raise campaign funds in excess of $6,000 with no limit on the percentage coming from outside Albany, but individual contributions were limited to $100. Here's some other background.)

I supported Loni Hancock's bill to initiate public campaign financing. Unfortunately Albany's own ordinance for campaign limits proved ineffective due to the Supreme Court's decision to allow unlimited expenditures by Political Action Committees, unions and businesses.

Reform would be good, especially since Albany had a financing reform ordinance for 13 years. Albany's City Council should reinstate an improved version of the Albany Campaign Finance Reform Act (ACFRA) of 1996. A task force appointed by the council in 2009 to study ACFRA recommended retention of the ordinance, and some improvements. 

The heart of ACFRA was a provision that allowed candidates to voluntarily choose, or reject, a limit on spending. This was a worthwhile reform that didn't cost the city, and did allow candidates a choice. 

Its repeal was another example of bloc voting by three council members: Atkinson, Wile and Lieber. Reasons cited for repeal of the ordinance were specious. Ironically, Wile placed on the April 5, 2010, council agenda a resolution supporting State Proposition 5 for campaign finance reform – but she and Atkinson and Lieber voted to repeal Albany's ordinance. Good governance begins at home.

I support campaign financing at the state level, which would be a state supported fund for candidates. At the local level this is hard to do, and in Albany's case a candidate had a choice to accept regulations to spend a certain amount or not. If you didn't opt for the campaign financing you still had restrictions on how much anyone could give you. My take on this ordinance was that not only did it have no "teeth" and was unenforceable, the only "right" choice was to accept the local ordinance or be criticized for opting out. 

It also, in my opinion, penalized people who may have been newer residents but may have wanted to run for office. Reading "between the lines" of the ordinance indicated to me that only "certain people" with a long history in Albany "deserved" to get elected, and I thought this highly undemocratic. Further, with the egregious U.S. Supreme Court decision in the "Citizens United" case, pretty much all forms of limiting contributions is unconstitutional. 

I will personally be working as an elected member of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee to do everything I can to support a constitutional amendment to reverse this harmful decision by the Supreme Court.

I do not have strong opinions regarding campaign financing except that I believe it should be handled by a committee outside of the City Council. There is an inherent conflict of interest when the politicians set the rules of the race they will be in and the way they will finance their coming campaigns.

Tomorrow's Question: Does Albany need to do more for pedestrian and bike safety? If so, what ideas do you have?

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