By Dan Schroeder
Today's Standard-Examiner has an article (bottom of front page) on the campaign finance ordinance. The article is also up on the S-E live site:
• City council amends campaign ordinanceHere are the first few paragraphs:
OGDEN — On the heels of a recent controversy, the city council Tuesday night amended the municipality’s campaign finance disclosure ordinance.As noted above, Jeske's principal objection was changing the criminal status of a violation from a class-B misdemeanor to an infraction. The argument given for this (by City Attorney Williams) was that virtually everyone else in Utah does it this way.
City Councilwoman Dorrene Jeske, who was the only person to cast a dissenting vote, said the ordinance amendments weren’t stringent enough. City Councilman Brandon Stephenson wasn’t present for the meeting and didn’t vote.
The amendments have been under consideration for about a month and were tweaked last week to include several additional provisions.
Those additions include a provision limiting individual campaign contributions to city council candidates to $1,500 and to mayoral candidates to $5,000.
Another provision was added requiring that campaign contributions of $750 or more within seven days of the election be reported within 24 hours.
In my opinion, an even more serious problem is the removal of the so-called 10-day complaint period. Specifically, the ordinance now gives the city recorder and city attorney much more discretion to simply ignore evidence of violations if they so choose (or if the mayor, who has the power to fire them at any time, so directs them). Although some members of the council expressed a desire to undo this change, most of them seemed to feel that they couldn't do so without the city attorney's permission--and the city attorney didn't give them permission.
Also, in my opinion, the $5000 limit on contributions to mayoral candidates is unlikely to have any discernible effect. I suppose it will prevent such contributions from growing even larger in the future. But if you look at Godfrey's contributors during the 2007 campaign, there were only 9 who gave more than $5000 and none who gave more than $10,000. In virtually all cases, a $10,000 can easily be split into two $5000 contributions either by dividing it between two spouses or by dividing it between a business and the person who owns the business. Unfortunately, the new ordinance puts no special limits on corporate contributions. (Federal election law prohibits corporate contributions, and applies contributions from a partnership toward the limits of the individual partners.)
Still, on balance, I believe this ordinance is a step in the right direction. The limit on contributions to city council candidates is reasonable. The more frequent reporting requirements will give voters much more timely information. And the new reporting requirements for PACs (actually taken from state law) will discourage the use of PACs to conceal the source of contributions. Any one of these three changes would have discouraged or prevented the 2007 FNURE fiasco.
The floor is open for reader discussion.
