Campaign contribution limits still a work in progress
Share with others:
Drive east for around five hours, and you can find examples of how caps on campaign contributions work -- and how they don't.
In Philadelphia, campaign contribution limits and rules deterring city contractors from writing big political checks have "had the tremendous effect of taking the gun away from donors," said Jack Stalberg, president of the Committee of Seventy, a reform group.
In Baltimore, though, campaign finance limits may have just pushed influence peddling in other directions. Last week, Mayor Sheila Dixon was indicted for taking more than $20,000 in gifts from developers doing deals with the city, days after a council member was indicted for taking $12,500 in bribes.
Baltimore's $4,000 limit on campaign contributions is "better than no limits at all," said Ryan O'Donnell, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a government watchdog group. But what's really needed is "comprehensive ethics reform," including provisions better preventing people from buying contracts or favors, he said.
With the introduction Thursday of proposed Allegheny County and city of Pittsburgh campaign contribution rules, the region's two biggest governments are now part of a nationwide debate on how to eliminate any appearance of influence buying or "pay-to-play" politics.
Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl have asked county and city councils to vote on new rules that would allow individuals to give no more than $4,600 per election cycle to candidates, and allow political action committees, or PACs, to give $10,000. There are now no limits on donations by people or PACs to city, county or state races, and five-figure checks to the mayor's or executive's coffers are common.
Mr. Ravenstahl, who has been dogged by questions about contracting processes, also issued an executive order that professional service contracts be awarded only after various firms are invited to submit their qualifications or proposals.
"Whether you gave money to me or not, whether you gave money to somebody on City Council or not, no personal or professional contracts can be awarded without … competitive process," he said.
Some cities, like Richmond, Va., have no campaign contribution limits. On the other end of the spectrum, Massachusetts state law prevents any person or PAC from giving any city, county or state candidate more than $500 a year.
"I do believe that the lower limits create a more ethical culture," said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts.
Philadelphia's law, which took effect in 2007, allows individuals to give $2,600 and PACs to give $10,600 to any candidate but lets them do that every calendar year. The proposed Pittsburgh and Allegheny County limits, by contrast, would apply to every four-year election cycle.
That means a PAC representing a business could give Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter $42,400 over the course of his term. Though that's high, it's an improvement over past practices, said Mr. Stalberg.
"Instead of giving a half a million dollars, which is what a lot of these law firms and unions were doing, suddenly they were limited to $10,000," he said. He added that one official told him, "I do not have to automatically grant a favor when asked, because nobody gave that much money."
Philadelphia's campaign contribution law doesn't stop multiple employees of a firm from giving amounts that add up to a lot of money. But a separate contracting law bars firms whose employees and PAC combine to exceed the limit from getting no-bid contracts.
"The two bills working together have had the effect of driving pay-to-play out of government," said Mr. Stalberg. "It definitely looks like it's gone a long way toward cleaning up the political environment in Philadelphia."
In Ohio, a campaign finance bill designed to stop "pay-to-play" contracting was approved by the state Legislature in the wake of the Coingate scandal, which essentially brought down the Ohio Republican Party in 2006, said Catherine Turcer, director of the political watchdog group Ohio Citizen Action.
"Here you had a big political donor who was rewarded with the state's investment of millions of public dollars in his business," said Ms. Turcer, whose group tracks the flow of money and politics in Ohio.
"Because of that scandal, the Legislature passed a law limiting everybody that contracts with all levels of government to an aggregate of $2,000 [in contributions to a candidate] per election cycle," Ms. Turcer said.
In flux are so-called "millionaire exceptions" that alter limits if a wealthy candidate puts lots of his own money into a race. The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that governments can't stop people from spending their own money getting elected.
Philadelphia's millionaire exception says that any time a candidate puts more than $250,000 of their own money in the race, the other candidates can take double-the-limit contributions from their donors.
But the Supreme Court in June ruled that if you raise the limits for one candidate, you've got to raise them for all candidates -- even the millionaires.
Mr. Onorato and Mr. Ravenstahl would compel wealthy candidates to declare that they plan to put more than $50,000 of their own funds into their bids for office. If they declared that, or later deposited that much in their campaign accounts, all candidates would be allowed to take unlimited contributions.
Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, said limits like the $4,000 contribution cap in his state aren't enough.
He helped write Chapel Hill's new campaign law, which allows council and mayoral candidates who raise certain amounts, and voluntarily limit spending, to get modest amounts of tax dollars to fund their campaigns, so they don't have to rely entirely on contributors.
Limits are "not terribly difficult to circumvent," he said. "But combined with disclosure and enforcement, especially if there is some alternative stream of funding that a campaign can get access to, like a public financing program, that combination helps relieve the pressure on candidates" to kowtow to big contributors.
First Published January 20, 2009 12:00 am
