State Senate OKs Limits on Campaign Giving

A new campaign finance reform bill that would slow but not stop the escalating political arms race in California won overwhelming approval from the state Senate on Wednesday.

The fast-track bill, opposed by a variety of “good government” lobbies as weak, is expected to be adopted by the Assembly today and sent immediately to Gov. Gray Davis.

If he signs the legislation, it will be subject to voter ratification Nov. 7. Spokeswoman Hilary McLean said the governor has no position on the bill (SB 1223).

The proposal would, among other things, seek to impose appeal-proof limits on the astronomical contributions given to candidates for state offices.

For example, donors could contribute no more than $20,000 to a gubernatorial candidate per election, starting in 2006. This would enable Davis, for example, to run for reelection in 2002 unbound by contribution limits.

By contrast, voter-approved Proposition 208 of 1996, which has been stymied by legal challenges, would restrict donations to candidates for governor to $500 per election. A federal court will take up the Proposition 208 case again next Tuesday.

Opponents, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, charge the Legislature’s bill is a “sneak attack” to preempt Proposition 208, if the initiative is ultimately upheld by the courts.

The Legislature’s plan would allow candidates to exceed spending limits if they voluntarily agreed to restrict their spending. Effective next year, it also would limit donations to legislative candidates to $3,000 per election, compared with $250 under Proposition 208.

Senate President Pro Tem John L. Burton (D-San Francisco), chairman of a two-house conference committee that wrote the bill without public testimony last Thursday, urged its approval by the full Senate on Wednesday.

“It is not perfect,” he said. “It is good. It is real. It will go before the voters and the courts will uphold it.”

He drew support from Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), a veteran of years of political reform fights. “The people of California have waited far too long for reform. This is not a perfect measure . . . [but] it is wrong to say we will wait for pie in the sky.”

The measure was approved on a bipartisan 32-2 vote.

Only maverick Democratic Sen. Tom Hayden of Los Angeles spoke against it, asserting that it was the Legislature’s own fault that Californians had been denied political reform.

Of Burton’s bill, Hayden said its “heart is to preempt Proposition 208, which was the will of the voters.”

Angered, Burton countered, “Let the voters decide whether it is real or whether it is bogus.”

For nearly 20 years, the Legislature has wrestled with political reform bills that were killed or vetoed by governors. Meantime, initiatives reached the ballot and were defeated outright or later struck down by the courts.

Facing a deadline to get his bill before the voters on Nov. 7, Burton told the Senate that the governor “wants the bill on his desk tomorrow.”

But McLean, deputy press secretary to Davis, said the governor had made no such demand and that “he has not taken a position on the bill.”

Burton insisted, however, that Davis’ legislative secretary, Mike Gotch, had told him the governor was eager to receive the bill before the Legislature recesses today for a monthlong vacation.