It was dismaying to see the San Benito County Board of
Supervisors unceremoniously dump a campaign finance reform
ordinance passed just last year.
It was dismaying to see the San Benito County Board of Supervisors unceremoniously dump a campaign finance reform ordinance passed just last year.
In fact, that vote combined with inaction on establishing a campaign ethics committee, is a pattern of behavior from our elected leaders that we find disappointing.
The ordinance would have placed a voluntary spending cap on candidates with an incentive to accept the limits. For supervisors, the cap would have limited candidates to spending only $10,000 per race. For district-wide races, such as the sheriff, the cap was set at $35,000. If a candidate accepted the spending cap, the money they could collect from individual donors would rise from $100 to $250. Also, anyone who donated at least $50 would have had their name disclosed in the contribution reports posted on the Web.
Though the ordinance was born in the politically tumultuous time after Jaime De La Cruz beat former Supervisor Bob Cruz, it was a good attempt to limit the influence of money in local races and to shine a spotlight on those who contribute to campaigns. But County Counsel Claude Biddle said the ordinance was hopelessly convoluted and invited legal challenge.
For example, Biddle cited confusion about the ordinance’s definition of an election cycle. One section says it is the period between May 1 and Dec. 31 of a general election year. Another section states that candidates can collect money from the time of the last election until June 30 of the present election year for primaries and from July 1 through December 31 for runoff elections. It was too late to make clarifications before next month when candidates begin filing their intention to run for office in June, Biddle said.
We find that hard to believe, and, unfortunately, it gave the supervisors an opening to kill the ordinance without saying they were against campaign finance reform. It would seem a simple matter to clarify the language in the next few weeks or delay the implementation of a new ordinance until the following election. Instead, Supervisors Reb Monaco, Anthony Botelho and De La Cruz voted to scrap it entirely.
We suspect that Supervisor Pat Loe, who cast the lone vote to save the ordinance, hit the mark when she hinted that she thought the whole discussion about ambiguity was just a justification for repealing it.
“If we want to get rid of it, let’s have some backbone to just get rid of it,” she said.
The blame for losing this important ordinance should not rest entirely with the current board. When the issue of campaign finance reform first came up, we asked the county to do a thorough analysis of the cost to run a local campaign to ensure the limits were reasonable, fearing that new county leaders would tank the proposal. And that’s exactly what happened.
Our local attempt to create transparency in the political process and to limit the financial influence wielded by wealthy people and organizations was a worthy goal. Who knows if there will be any desire to take another stab at this important issue.
