Campaign Reform to Be Up to Voters : Government: Supervisors clear the way for June election to decide on proposed cap on political contributions that would rewrite county’s 13-year-old TINCUP law.

Orange County voters will get the chance in June to consider sweeping reforms of the county’s 13-year-old campaign finance law that would for the first time cap political contributions to candidates for county offices.

The Board of Supervisors, shedding an issue that has dogged them for months, cleared the way for that vote by unanimously agreeing Tuesday to let voters consider the proposal. The election, scheduled for June 2, will mark the first opportunity county voters have ever had to decide on local campaign reform.

“I think it’s a good ordinance and one that I’m confident will be approved by the voters in June,” said Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, who formally proposed the ballot measure. “I’m going to be urging people to vote for it.”

The proposed reform comes in response to growing frustration with the current law, known as TINCUP, particularly with loopholes that have permitted political action committees to make more than $820,000 in unregulated contributions to supervisorial candidates during the past 14 years.

In an effort to curb those contributions, the proposed ordinance would limit contributors to $1,000 per candidate each election. Candidates could receive an additional $1,000 if they are forced into a runoff.

Those limits would apply to candidates for all county offices--including such previously unregulated positions as sheriff and district attorney. The cap on contributions will be allowed to increase according to the cost of living.

Backers of the proposal were elated by the supervisors’ action. Former County Planning Commissioner Shirley L. Grindle, the ordinance’s principal author, said the supervisors had cleared the way for Orange County to enact the state’s strongest campaign finance law.

Other campaign reformers hailed it as well.

“This is by far the most significant development in Orange County politics for the past 13 years,” said Lisa Foster, executive director of California Common Cause. “We have a very good idea of what works and what doesn’t, and we’re confident that decisions in Orange County will now be made in the public interest, not for special interests.”

The supervisors all joined in voting to put the proposal on the ballot, but some did it with more enthusiasm than others. Supervisors Vasquez and Roger R. Stanton, both of whom face reelection campaigns this year, led the backing for the measure, while Supervisor Don R. Roth voiced “great concern” about it.

Specifically, Roth described the drafting of the proposal, which was done by Grindle and her ad hoc committee, as a “very closed process.” In addition, Roth said, the resulting document will favor incumbents over challengers by denying challengers the money they need to get name recognition.

“Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking this will make elections more competitive,” Roth said. “It won’t.”

Roth’s comments were seconded by Harvey A. Englander, a prominent local campaign consultant who had urged the supervisors to reject the proposal or to ask Grindle and her organization to pay any legal fees incurred by the county as a result of challenges levied against the ordinance should it pass in June.

“If she is so confident about the legality of this, why shouldn’t she and her committee be willing to pay the legal fees?” Englander asked.

Grindle called that suggestion “ridiculous” and said it “did not even warrant a response.”

While Grindle and other members of her committee praised the board and thanked the members for their cooperation, Englander expressed disappointment.

“They did the political thing, not the good government thing,” he said.

Nevertheless, Englander and other opponents of the proposed reform agree that it will be favored to win at the ballot box. Contribution limits have proved popular in other parts of the state and nation, almost always winning when put to a popular vote.

“There will be no campaign against it, and it will easily pass,” Englander said. “But one or more groups will challenge it, and huge chunks of it will be overturned.”

However, the county counsel’s office reviewed the proposal and did not register any major objections. Similarly, Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, while warning that future court decisions could change the ordinance’s viability, wrote to the supervisors Monday and said the proposal “is the best we can accomplish at this time.”

He urged the supervisors to adopt the proposal.

Although the reform package includes a number of detailed provisions for regulating campaigns, its principal feature is the contribution limit. That limit is intended largely to close a loophole in TINCUP that has allowed political action committees to flourish outside the county’s conflict-of-interest regulations.