Reforms Failed the Test of Faults and Consequences : Ethics: The proposal for public financing of municipal elections was flawed. The City Council was right to deep-six it.

The Los Angeles City Council did the right thing in refusing to be stampeded into endorsing the public financing of political campaigns that was proposed by Mayor Tom Bradley’s Citizens Ethics Commission.

The panel’s proposal fell far short of its stated goals: curbing the influence of special interests on the city government, capping the cost of city election campaigns and opening up the election process to a broader range of candidates. In fact, the plan would have served instead to further entrench incumbents and further empower the affluent, while doing nothing to curb special-interest money.

Under the commission’s plan, a portion of the private funds raised by candidates for city office would have been matched with taxpayer dollars. In exchange, overall limits would have been placed on the amount that could be spent in a citywide or council district election.

Let’s analyze this proposal in the context of its stated objectives:

* Would it have limited the influence of “special-interest” money on the political process? The answer is a resounding “No!”

Candidates would still have been permitted to solicit and receive funds from persons or companies doing business with the city or its agencies--the very definition of “special interest” money. Mayoral candidates would have been able to receive up to $1,000 from such donors, and council candidates up to $500. That is precisely what current law allows.

If those laws fail to provide the necessary controls, there are more-effective ways to stop special-interest contributions than the proposal put forth by the Ethics Commission. One is to prohibit elected officials from voting or acting on matters affecting their contributors. Such a law is in effect in Orange County and was proposed for Los Angeles by Councilman Joel Wachs and me during the ethics debate. Another is to have campaigns completely financed by the taxpayers, thus prohibiting all private contributions. Oddly, the Ethics Commission chose not to propose either of those options.

* Would the proposal have placed a meaningful cap on the amount of money that is spent on city elections? Again, no.

In fact, the proposal allowed for a level of spending per campaign is so high that it has only been exceeded twice in City Council elections and never in a citywide election.

* Would the proposal have opened up the process to a broader range of participants? No.

The commission’s proposal required that in order for any candidate to qualify for public funds, he or she must raise at least $25,000 in amounts of $250 or less. Failure to reach that threshold automatically disqualified that candidate from any form of public financing.

In the 1989 elections for the City Council, only two challengers raised more than $25,000. What the commissioners failed to realize was that, for most candidates, it is still exceedingly difficult to raise that amount of money. This is a particular hardship on candidates for office in less affluent parts of our city, or for candidates who don’t have access to people with lots of discretionary income.

Election-financing laws affecting the city have already changed twice in the last five years.

Ernani Bernardi, one of the council’s most outspoken reformers, won 80% voter approval in April, 1985, for one of the strictest campaign-financing laws in the country. Then, in 1988, the voters of the state passed Proposition 73, which further restricted fund-raising and which is still being tested in court. Those laws have been in effect only for a short time and they deserve a chance to prove themselves before we junk them for yet another change.

Opponents of public financing have other gripes about the concept. It limits freedom of speech for a candidate. It carries a $27.4-million price tag at a time when the city’s budget is strained and demands for service are at an all-time high. And it arouses the resentment of some voters who aren’t comfortable with the notion that their tax dollars would finance the campaigns of candidates with whom they fundamentally disagree and for whom they would never vote--like Lyndon LaRouche, who has twice qualified for federal matching funds in his campaigns for the presidency, even though he has barely garnered enough votes to be noticed.

This is not to argue that all aspects of the old system were better than the current or proposed systems; it is to say that no system is without its faults and consequences. And the faults and consequences in the commission’s plan made it a well-intentioned but ill-advised proposal that was rightly rejected by the City Council.