L.A. City-Funded Campaign Financing Study is Approved
Analysts asked for "clean money" approach, but some express doubts.
The Los Angeles City Council took a hesitant first step toward full public financing of city campaigns Tuesday, voting unanimously to study how much it would cost if taxpayers funded the campaign of every council candidate.
On an 11-0 vote, the council gave its policy analysts 90 days to develop a workable "clean money" system for campaign fund raising.
Three council members -- Wendy Greuel, Eric Garcetti and Bill Rosendahl -- have been pushing for public financing since the May municipal election. Rosendahl, whose district includes Westchester and Playa del Rey, said such a system would reduce the cynicism shown by voters during his recent campaign.
"When I was a candidate, I had doors slammed in my face by people who thought somebody bought me, owned me, controlled me," he said.
Still, other council members voiced doubts about such a system, saying it could prove to be ineffective in dealing with wealthy, self-funded candidates or special-interest groups that sometimes pour hundreds of thousands of dollars in "independent expenditures" into the campaign of a single candidate.
"We're not taking the money out of campaigns," said council President Alex Padilla. "We're shifting where the money comes from."
Los Angeles already has a partial public financing system that allows candidates to receive $1 from the city for each $1 raised in contributions from individuals. A "clean money" system would drop the requirement that a candidate raise any money at all, and would instead provide funds for candidates who gather a minimum number of signatures from registered voters.
Padilla said he wants to know where the council would find the money for such a system, saying it could drain the city's coffers by up to $25 million annually. Councilman Tony Cardenas went further, asking how such public financing would address a candidate such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who spent $50 million on each of his last two campaigns.
The skeptical questions raised the likelihood that Rosendahl, Greuel and Garcetti will have to take a public financing proposal directly to the voters in the form of a ballot measure. For the time being, however, Garcetti sought to reassure his colleagues, saying clean money systems are working in Arizona and Vermont.
"I know there's a lot of fear and hesitation about this," Garcetti said. "I would just say, 'Keep an open mind.' "
Those comments drew an indignant response from Councilman Jack Weiss, who said his colleagues were focused on pressing policy questions, not fear, when reviewing the public financing plan. To even the playing field between a wealthy billionaire candidate and a vastly underfunded one, taxpayers could wind up writing "big checks" to pay for various campaigns.
"I don't think the people of the city of L.A. are ultimately going to want that to happen," he said.
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