In an effort to reduce the influence of deep-pocketed
campaign donors and level the playing field for grassroots
challengers, the Los Angeles City Council voted recently to
significantly increase the amount of public financing that
candidates for city offices could receive.
Los Angeles's matching funds program is now among the most
generous in the country, with qualified candidates for
local office able to receive $6 in public funds for every
$1 they raise from city residents. That 6:1 match -- up
from the previous range of 1:1 to 4:1 -- would stretch a
$115 donation to a council candidate into an $800
contribution -- the maximum allowed in local elections. The
city is expected to pay the higher match out of unspent
funds that have accumulated in the program, which receives
$3 million a year from taxpayers.
But campaign finance reform advocates warn that the changes
adopted by the City Council could actually hurt -- not help
-- grassroots candidates by making it harder for them to
qualify for matching funds. That's because the new rules
require candidates to collect significantly more
contributions before they qualify for matching funds.
The amount of money candidates must raise to be eligible
for public funds -- $25,000 in council races -- is not
changing. But they'll need to collect more than twice as
many contributions to hit that threshold -- 217 instead of
100. That's because only the first $115 of any donation
would count toward the $25,000 threshold, down from the
current $250. The idea is to tie eligibility for matching
funds to a candidate's ability to draw financial support
from ordinary members of the community, rather than from
deep-pocketed donors and special interests.
But that works to the advantage of politicians who are
already in office. "You might as well call this the
incumbency protection act," one advocate of
campaign finance reform told the council.
Indeed. Incumbents and established politicians can hold a
fundraiser or flip through their Rolodex to collect
200-plus contributions fairly easily. It's much harder for
first-time candidates to drum up donations in that kind of
volume.
According to an analysis by the California Clean
Money Campaign, the new rules would have denied
matching dollars to numerous candidates who qualified for
funding in the last three municipal elections. And the
candidates who did qualify would have done so much later in
the election cycle -- some as little as two weeks before
election day -- when the additional funds are less
helpful.
In response, Councilman Mike Bonin has
proposed lowering the fundraising threshold to $11,500 for
council candidates. That would allow council candidates to
qualify for matching funds if they collected as few as 100
donations of $115 or more -- the same number they needed to
collect under the old rules. There would be a similar
reduction for citywide candidates, who were also affected
by the changes.
That proposal remains in limbo. In the meantime, the
council has adopted Council President Herb
Wesson's proposal to lower the threshold to
$20,000 for council candidates -- a $5,000 reduction. That
was a modest tweak to make sure the new, more generous
matching fund system is in place before the special
election in June for the seat recently vacated by
Councilman Mitch Englander. Wesson said he
wanted the Ethics Commission to do a more thorough vetting
of Bonin's proposal before lowering the threshold further
for all future elections.
That's reasonable. It doesn't seem like the City Council
intended to make it harder for candidates to qualify for
matching funds. But new rules have done just that, and they
should be changed to level the playing field. Nevertheless,
it's also worth having the Ethics Commission analyze how
many contributions candidates should have to amass to
qualify for matching funds, and whether the city can afford
to lower the threshold significantly.
Right now the matching funds program has $20 million on
hand, and the more generous matching fund program will eat
into the surplus. If the demand for matching dollars is so
great that it threatens to overwhelm the fund, the city
will have to scale back the aid. It's important to strike
the right balance to keep the matching fund program solvent
and no costlier to taxpayers.
