Davis Calls for Public Financing of Campaigns

The felony conviction of Sen. Joseph B. Montoya makes it clearer than ever that state lawmakers should not be collecting outside income or speaking fees and that the taxpayers, not special interests, should be financing campaigns, state Controller Gray Davis said Tuesday.

“There ought to be public financing for every campaign,” Davis said in a breakfast interview with The Times’ Sacramento bureau. “It works for the President. There is no reason it can’t work for other offices.”

Any proposed reform that does not curtail private campaign financing would do no more than “tinker around the edges” of the problem, said Davis, who was chief of staff to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and served two terms in the Assembly before being elected controller in 1986.

Davis, a skilled fund-raiser who has collected millions of dollars from the private sector to support his own political career, noted that a recent survey by the Los Angeles Times Poll found that three-fourths of Californians support banning private contributions for legislators and replacing the present system with public financing.

The case against Montoya, a Whittier Democrat who was convicted Friday of seven counts of extortion, racketeering and money laundering, shows that the public cannot have confidence in its elected officials as long as they depend on special interests to fill their campaign treasuries, Davis said.

“You have got to free public officials from the taint and suspicion of private financing,” he said. “Otherwise, every time someone casts a vote in favor of an interest that may have supported them at any point in their political career, a legitimate suspicion can be raised.”

Despite his statements, Davis said he opposes Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp’s government ethics initiative. That proposal would ban honorariums, strengthen conflict-of-interest codes and establish partial public financing for state campaigns. Davis said he opposes the November ballot measure because it would limit legislators to 12 years in one office.

“I am against arbitrary limits,” he said. “I think the legislative process needs some institutional memory. There is something to be said for experience.”

However, Davis said he would support term limits for statewide elected officials, such as the governor and controller.

Davis also said he supports a sweeping environmental initiative proposed by Van de Kamp, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor. The “Big Green” initiative, as the November ballot proposal has been called, would phase out cancer-causing agricultural pesticides, tighten safeguards against oil spills, restrict air polluting chemicals, control logging and strengthen health protection for farm workers.

“I really believe the people are way ahead of their elected officials on a couple of issues, and the environment is one of them,” Davis said. “This initiative represents an accurate description of what most Californians want.”

Davis said he is “absolutely confident” that the Legislature will never pass the items proposed in the initiative. “There is no constituency for the future,” he said, quoting his former boss, Gov. Brown.

On another matter, Davis said he supports repealing the constitutional limit on state spending, known as the Gann Limit. Repealing the limit would free an extra $1 billion a year for the general use of state government, money that otherwise would be spent on education or be returned to the taxpayers, he said.