A Challenge to Candidates

In adopting the strict campaign finance reforms proposed by a citizens committee, the Thousand Oaks City Council demonstrated precisely why such rules are so needed.

Public trust in elected officials is lamentably low in Thousand Oaks, largely because accusations of corruption make such handy campaign ammunition--with or without any supporting evidence.

The new law should help in two ways:

* By restricting contributions to $250, requiring more detailed and timely reporting of donations and limiting fund-raising to a nine-month period surrounding each election, the law should make it harder for donors to influence the winners.

* Just as important, the law should make it tougher for critics to blame every City Council decision that doesn’t go their way on bought-off politicians toadying to the whim of well-heeled financial backers. Thousand Oaks is overdue for relief from that barrage of insulting and unfounded accusations.

The Citizens Blue Ribbon Campaign Finance Reform Committee, appointed by the council in March, rightly set out to craft an ordinance that would address public perception of corruption, as well as the real thing. Although the committee found no evidence of the latter, it found plenty of the former.

The suspicion and personal ill will that split the City Council were on clear display last week during more than three hours of debate over the proposed measure.

Council members Linda Parks and Elois Zeanah, often at odds with city staff, objected to a provision that allows the city clerk or city attorney to decide when and whom to audit during the contribution-reporting process. An amendment to require audits of everyone was voted down as unwieldy.

And council member Andy Fox balked at the measure’s requirement that unspent campaign funds be returned or added to the city’s general fund. Fox has used his leftover campaign funds to set up an officeholder account, unique among Thousand Oaks council members but common elsewhere, which pays for newsletters, charitable contributions, barbecues and such. He argued that such innocuous good deeds in the four years between election seasons can hardly be called campaigning.

We believe otherwise. For all the community assistance it provides, there’s no question that such a fund exists primarily to make voters think fondly of the politician whose name is prominently linked to each gesture. In the end, frequent Fox ally Judy Lazar sided with Parks and Zeanah to uphold the citizens committee’s ban on officeholder accounts.

If the committee’s mission had been merely to stamp out corruption, we might share Fox’s umbrage at the assault on his perfectly legal (if self-serving) method of doing good works.

But the committee’s mission was bigger: restoring public faith in the electoral process. Getting rid of the year-round, never-ending flow of contributions into a politician’s coffers and out to benefit potential future voters is one of several important steps taken by the new law.

We applaud the committee and counsel Craig Steele for coming up with tough, fair measures that could do much to foment trust and civility in Thousand Oaks politics. We congratulate the City Council for passing the ordinance unanimously.

And we challenge all candidates and their supporters to live by the letter and the spirit of the law as we head toward November.