The Vancouver Sun has been running an interesting series over the last number of days on municipal campaign financing. Today they have a piece on how an overwhelming majority agree with limits on donations and spending.
One has to wonder how restrictions on campaign financing would impact our current mayor and council and a number of our school board trustees. Given the large amounts of donations made by some developers (mainly to Wayne Wright) and also the many donations made by various unions to many of our councilors and trustees restrictions would certainly level the playing field. Using the Vancouver Sun database it is easy to see where financial support came from during the 2008 municipal election.
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4 comments:
campaign finance reform is long overdue in New Westminster civic elections.
I agree. Generally, I would like to see both spending limits and donation limits.
I think in NW, our town is so small that a minimum amount of spending would be required to get a candidate's message across. There is no need for big spending campaigns.
I also think there should be a limit that any entity can donate in total. This would prevent unions, bars, developers and "electors groups" from unduly influencing elections.
I heard a suggestion recently that a % of all campaign financing should be spent on promoting voter turn out, providing a larger budget for the electoral committee. One thing we all agree on is that voter turn out needs to rise.
I would agree that many would concur with young Will on this issue. Unfortunately Will you didn't comment on how to control unofficial "electors groups" such as the labour contingent of Harper, Williams, Cote, McEvoy and Wright. There has been an unofficial group for NDP Labour in New Westminster for decades. Many people refer to New Westminster as the Labour Retirement Riding. Come get your pension here! For now only MLA and MP pensions but if approved even council and the Mayor will have one!
At least one thing CUPE will have to do is spread the money around in smaller chunks rather than plumping up campaigns like McEvoy in the last civic election.
Ohhh, An anonymous commenter. How daring.
It is not the place of a short comment to list every contingency. Not even the article I am responding to did that.
However since you asked. Unions, businesses, electors groups, individuals and organizations (in my view) should have a low maximum donation to any ONE campaign and a low maximum donation to all campaigns in total. If the Firefighters Union, for example, wanted to support a candidate, a $500 donation should be the max for any one candidate with a mad donation threshold of $1500 for he entire election. This is just an example off the top of my head. Perhaps the Mayoral candidate could accept a donation of 1.33x the max for a counselor and a school trustee 0.8x.
Further (I decree by fiat) 5% of all $ raised by a candidate must be paid to the electoral committee for the purposes of promoting the election.
As for my age... I treat people with respect. That should do.
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