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One of Orange County’s smallest cities is moving to implement the strongest campaign finance laws of any municipality in the county – an ordinance that would bar elected officials from voting on contracts benefitting campaign donors regardless of the amount contributed.
Ahead of Thanksgiving, Stanton City Council members voted 4-1 on an ordinance that would limit individual contributions to political candidates to $1,000, limit fundraising windows and mandate officials to recuse themselves from votes that affect a campaign donor, like contracts or developments for 12 months after receiving the donation.
City council members are slated to do a second reading of the proposed campaign finance overhauls at their 6:30 p.m. Tuesday meeting.
“This is a great tool to let all of Orange County know that we’re trying to be above just the minimum standards the state sets. We’re only – what – 40,000 people … When you raise $60,000 for a campaign, that’s a lot of money,” said Councilman Gary Taylor at the Nov. 26 meeting.
Councilman Donald Torres said the ordinance shows residents they are a priority.
“Residents will know that we are selflessly putting regulations on ourselves to ensure that future politicians are putting residents’ interest first, not any other special interest,” he said at the Nov. 26 meeting.
“If we leave avenues open for people to take advantage of things, they will do it. So that’s why it’s very essential that we close any loophole.”
Councilwoman Carol Warren, who is finishing out her term, was the dissenting vote – arguing it takes more money than the law allows to run a political campaign.
“You could barely get one flyer sent out on this and if that corrupts somebody in the city to raise enough money for one flyer, they shouldn’t be on council to begin with,” she said at the Nov. 26 meeting.
“This is an unduly harsh ordinance. I think it’s going to hurt the council moving forward, because a lot of people that would be good, solid council members can’t afford to do it.”
Councilwoman Hong Alyce Van, who lost reelection bid, acknowledged it was expensive to run a campaign but called the ordinance a “gold standard.”
“I agree with you that it is very expensive to get your message out there, but I believe that this ordinance specifically, is not too extreme. They’re allowing $1,000,” She said. “That’s a lot of money.”
Stanton’s New Law: Limiting The Influence of Campaign Finance
Current state laws limit individual campaign contributions to $5,500 and require an official to recuse themself from a vote impacting a donor who contributed $250 or more to their campaigns in a 12-month period.
But Stanton officials are going further.
The city’s new ordinance prohibits officials from accepting donations from contractors and developers who have a contract pending in front of the council or received council approval within a 12-month period.
City council members will also have to publicly announce any contribution they received regardless of the amount and recuse themselves from the vote.
The law would also ban a candidate from fundraising more than 11 months before an election.
The contribution limit would not apply to large independent expenditures – a limitation on which officials in couple cities have publicly worried would spark lawsuits on First Amendment grounds following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling Citizens United case in 2010.
A debate on limiting large independent expenditures kicked off in nearby Anaheim last year after FBI agents and independent investigators alleged Disneyland resort interests – which regularly spend heavily on local elections – have outsized influence on city hall.
In the wake of the scandal, Anaheim officials decided to require candidates to repay their debt within a year from the election, as well as limit personal campaign loans to $100,000 per election as part of their reforms.
[Read: Anaheim Officials Change How Political Candidates Fundraise in Wake of Corruption Scandal]
Meanwhile, officials in other cities this year like Orange and Laguna Beach voted to increase their campaign contribution limits.
[Read: More Orange County Cities Overhaul Campaign Finance Rules]
How Do OC Cities Rank When it Comes to Campaign Finance?
Stanton’s campaign finance overhaul comes after Citizens Take Action – a group that grades OC cities on how strong their campaign contribution laws are and how transparent they are on campaign finance – gave Stanton a failing score in 2022.
David Burke, founder of the group and a Cypress City Councilman, said the new limitations would bump one of OC’s smallest cities to the top spot in the county when it comes to campaign finance.
“If Stanton were to pass the ordinance, it would become the highest scoring city in all of Orange County in our report card, in the A to A+ range, which would be in my opinion, and our research director’s opinion, a very impressive feat to kind of stand above the pack of what most cities have done throughout the county,” he said at the Nov. 26 meeting.
In 2022, Citizen Take Action graded Laguna Beach the highest score with a 93% when it came to campaign finance.
Mission Viejo got the lowest score with a 4% followed by Buena Park with 7%.
To view where your city stands when it comes to campaign finance laws, click here.
That same year, Voice of OC in collaboration with Chapman University students published an investigation ranking how transparent cities were about campaign finance data.
Laguna Woods and Villa Park both received the lowest score.
[Read: Who’s Financing Orange County’s Politicians?]
Will Stanton Still Consider Publicly Financed Elections?
The new contribution limits come after Stanton officials earlier this year debated and directed staff to do more research on publicly funded elections – something advocates say will diminish the influence campaign contributors have on policy making.
[Read: Will Stanton Switch to Publicly Funded Elections?]
In a publicly financed election, candidates who raise money from residents generally receive a match of five times what they raised or a lump sum of $20,000 from the city’s budget.
Stanton Councilwoman Van said if the city can implement publicly financed campaigns, candidates won’t have to solicit donations and it’s just a matter of staff having the time to research the impacts of such a shift.
“Then you guys can decide how it is that campaigns can be funded without having all these special corporate interests or big money involved in our politics,” she said.
“Perhaps in a few months or whenever staff is ready, it’ll come back, and you guys can hash it out then.”
Warren pushed back on publicly financed elections, saying it could lead to wasteful spending.
“Every time I’ve run, I’ve had one person that files 25 bucks to be a councilman, and that’s all they do,” she said. “If the city is on the hook to support these people that never lift a finger after that, I think that’s a really bad use of public funds.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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