April 08, 2005

Report From Voter-Owned Elections Hearing

Headed For Council Vote In Several Weeks

As it turned out, Thursday's hearing on the Sten/Blackmer proposal for public financing of campaigns took place one year to the day after the last major Council discussion on the proposal.

During this latest hearing, we at one point realized that we should have read through our coverage of that earlier one, to look at how any viewpoints on the proposal might have changed or evolved in the intervening time. We were having trouble recalling any of the prior comments until, afterwards, Commissioner Leonard (who also had trouble remembering specifics) mentioned the remark last year by Commissioner Saltzman. "It is a sign of a work ethic, too," Saltzman said last April 7. "It shows how hard people want this job."

Unfortunately, Saltzman was absent for this latest hearing on the issue, so we have no idea where he might stand on the proposal when it finally comes up for a vote. In a comment to our pre-hearing item, Chris Smith suggests that Saltzman's amendment to limit administrative costs might be a signal that he's willing to support the proposal.

"I look forward to hearing a lot of argument about it," said Sten as he introduced the proposal. By our count, seventeen people testified in favor of the proposal, while nine people testified against it -- with six of those urging Council to refer it to voters. We, of course, are entirely alone in supporting the proposal but preferring a referral, but we'll come back to that later.

Sten also indicated that he had been following the discussion, both online and off, but had one word of advice on the proposal: "For some of the people debating this, I do encourage you to read it."

(You can also find a parallel discussion taking place over at BlueOregon, where Kari Chisholm posted the testimony he offered at Thursday's hearing. He was one of many people who were testifying before City Council for the first time in order to support the proposal. Whether that presence of so many first-timers was by happenstance or design, we have no idea.)

For the staff presentation, Blackmer outlined some of the changes that had been made to the proposal since last year, including the change from "Clean Money" to "Voter-Owned Elections" in order to avoid the rhetorical implication that the current campaign finance process is "dirty". Also incorporated now are increased safeguards against misuse of the public funds (read: no Hawaii campaign headquarters for Phil Stanford), enforcement and auditing procedures, and a proposal to have the plan referred to voters in 2010 after its use in three election cycles.

One important thing to note about that last bit: It's not a binding part of the proposal, because the current Council cannot commit a future Council to such an action. The only way this plan will be referred to voters in the future is if the Council as it exists in several years opts to do so.

William McNary, president of USAction (self described as "the largest network of progressive grassroots organizations working together to strengthen their political power and fight to win social, racial, economic and environmental justice") said the proposal was "part of the continuum of voting rights" and was about "protecting every voter's rights to political participation". He argued that it would allow candidates to spend more time raising issues, hopes, and aspirations than they spend raising money.

Ed Suslovic, a former legislator from the other Portland (in Maine, and yes he did make reference to the historical coin toss which named our city after his) who participated in that state's public finance system, said the proposal would make our Portland a "national leader at the municipal level". If the proposal is adopted, Portland would become the first city in the nation to institute such a system.

Suzanne Novak (associate counsel for the Democracy Program of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law) gave detailed testimony as to the legality and constitutionality of such voluntary systems, and offered assistance to the City should there be any court challenges against the proposal.

Shannon Olive, a member of Oregon Action, urged a yes vote. "I will be that first candidate to run," she said.

Frances Baker of the League of Women Voters of Portland urged approval, as did Chris Smith who was representing the support of the City Club of Portland for the proposal.

Mark Gardiner, former Chief Financial Officer for the City (as pointed out over in the BlueOregon thread, he also has or had ties to Portland Family Entertainment of PGE Park fame/infamy), said that it's the current process (not necessarily the peple) that's corrupt, in that it generates "access", "skewed perspectives", and "patterns of decisions".

It should be noted that all of the above represents invited testimony, as distinguished from the public testimony, whose numerical breakdown we referred to earlier. We didn't take many notes during public testimony, except for when something said by opponents of the proposal caught our attention.

Dave Lister (known to readers of local blogs from occassional appearances in the comments sections) questioned why this proposal was something the City could fund through the use of a surcharge across all City bureaus, but in other budget discussions (for example, the need to hire more police officers), the "colors of money" argument is given, in which distinctions are made between the discretionary and non-discretionary elements of the budget.

Lister also urged the Council to push discussion of the proposal into the broader conversation on reform of the City Charter for which Mayor Potter has expressed interest.

Ken Turner, a business leader in East Portland, raised the issue of there being some sort of cap on the total amount of public funds available, to avoid problems should a large number of candidates participate in the system.

(We don't recall whether it was right awa, or later during Council discussion, but it was later suggested that it would be the responsibiltiy of the citizen commission included in the proposal to lessen the amount provided to each participating candidate should such a situation arise. Proponents of the proposal argue that it's unlikely to arise.)

Turner also expressed support for referring the proposal to voters, arguing that it's the only reasonable way to show that there's public support for the proposal. Potter responded by saying that the fact that 61% of Portland voters elected him when he ran on a platform which included campaign finance reform says that voters have already expressed support for the idea.

A representative of the Portland Business Alliance, while saying that the proposal "has been a difficult issue" for them, questioned using taxpayer dollars on people who "for personal reasons want to run for office". She also said that not immediately referring the proposal to the voters would lead to "a very expensive experiment".

Irwin Mandel (yes, the Mandels, of course, were there also) called it a "gret idea whose time has not yet come". He urged Council instead to wait and see whether or not Potter's self-imposed campaign contributions limits set a precedent for future candidates.

In a rather poor example of note-taking, we don't know whether it was Irwin or Lili Mandel who said this: "This is not voter-owned elections. It's voter-paid-for elections procedures."

A couple of things were brought up at the tail end of public testimony. Continuing our briefly-shaky note-taking at that point in the hearing, we are unsure whether or not all of these points were raised by Janice Thompson of the Money in Politics Research Action Project, who testified at the end. But the points themselves are important, so we want to get into them for a moment.

First, on the referral matter, it was suggested that referring the matter directly to the voters would be throwing it into a political process that's questionable and itself awash with money. In our support for referring this to voters, we understand that risk. But we maintain that matters of governmental of electoral structure -- for better or for worse -- are more properly settled in the arena of the ballot measure.

But it's the other comment that annoyed us the most. "Would we really have wanted to refer the Voting Rights Act?" it was asked.

This argument is an unfortunate strawman. Literally denying Americans the right to vote is a fundamental matter of inherent and constitutional rights in a democracy that needs to be kept outside and above the potentially-heated passions of the people. What we're discussing here is not a matter of an inherent demoratic right, but a public policy question of the best way to try to ensure the best possible elections procedures. It's simply different.

(There was also the suggestion by a representative of the realty industry that references in the proposal to "resident" be changed to "resident and registered voter". Last time we checked, as idiotic as it is, [This isn't what we meant to say, but we can't remember what we did mean to say. - b!X] it's not a requirement to be a registered voter in order to participate by contributing money. And we're fairly confident, in our own little layman's way, that any attempt to impose such a restriction would be delcared an unconstitutional infringement on the right to freely associate.)

Which brings us around, finally, to Council discussion.

Commissioner Leonard said that after last year's discussion, he "mulled it over" and raised some concerns with Commissioner Sten, including "making sure that peopl publicly funded were nt coordinating their campaigns".

Leonard has raised that issue last year, calling it more than a hypothetical because during the primary he was facing a coordinated effort on the part of several neighborhood candidates to unseat him. The new version of the Sten/Blackmer proposal includes a prohibition on using one's public campaign dollars for candidates other than oneself. "I feel it's been drafted in a way I feel comfortable with," Leonard said Thursday.

On the matter of referring the proposal to the voters, Leonard said that the Founding Fathers had "outright rejected the notion of initiative and referral" out of the concern that "demogoguery could rule". He said that people elected to office are elected to make decisions.

Leonard also said that he liked the idea of getting rid of the notion that he makes decisions for any reason other than thinking they are the right ones, and was tired of having his motivations questioned. "The perception that exists today is a real one," he said, "and I would welcome the opportunity to remove that."

(After the hearing, we suggested to Leonard that there was a philosophical link between support for public financing of campaigns and oversight of Portland police officers on the Joint TerrorismTask Force. What we believe is this: In neither instance is everyone arguing that the people involved are corrupt. Rather, what's being argued is that we are supposed to ensure propriety, rather than assume it.)

After rattling off some budget numbers taken from the budget whose unveilling Potter delayed from Thursday until Friday, Leonard did make clear that while he supports the proposal, it was one of many items which should be funded and needs to be considered in the context of prioritizing that list of needs. In essence, he said, the debate fr him was not on the merits of the proposal, but where it goes on the list of priorities.

Commissioner Adams tried to "simplify" the funding discussion. "Foregoing just one unnecessary tax abatement could more than pay for the costs of this reform," he said. He then noted that the remark prompted hand waves of approval "from both sides".

"I ran as a candidate to shake up City Hall," Adams said. "And this does that." He called it "complimentary" to other planned reforms such as his proposal to register lobbyists, and said that it should open to door to viable candidates who in the current system of campaign finance would never have the chance to be viable.

As for "the debate over whether Mayor Potter's campaign was the beginning of a trend or an anomoly", Adams said he hoped it was the start of a trend that "will be propelled forward" by the public financing plan.

Adams also opposed "throwing this into a campaign environment where it absolutely can get eaten alive by special interest campaign contributions" -- meaning referring it to voters. He did express support for having voters "check in on it at some future date", but did note that the current Council cannot bind future Councils to that course of action.

Potter placed the proposal in the context of some "core issues", including the need to restoe trust in government and increasing diversity. "It does not escape me that we are five white guys sitting up here," in response to an earlier remark during public testimony that this fact was the "elephant in the room" during the discussion.

(He did note that he had "a gay City Council member on one side, and a happy City Council member on the other side." To which Adams told the audience: "You decide.")

Potter said that his goal before leaving office was for there to be more candidates from communities of color, and more gay and lesbian candidates. "More candidates that reflect our community," he said.

Then things went a little weird.

"Incumbents have a distinct advantage," Potter said. "I know that when I run again in four years that I will have an advantage."

"Is this an announement?" Leonard asked.

"And after that when I run again," Potter added.

"This is a day of news, isn't it?" said Adams.

(We call this weird because prior press accounts have indicated that Potter wasn't likely to run again, although we don't recall whether this was something he had said, or if it was speculation based upon people questioning his commitment.)

Potter also pointed out that anyone running for office who doesn't like the public financing system does not have to opt into it. He also sought to undercut charges that he supports the proposal because he will benefit from it during any re-election campaign.

"I will not accept any public funds as a candidate," he announced. "I didn't before and I did okay, and I'm not going to do it when I run again next time."

On the referral matter, Potter said he didn't think you can take everything to the voters. When Portlanders elected him, he argued, they said that "they believed in candidates who accepted less money".

Commissioner Sten (after saying he hesitated to follow Potter's comments) sought to calrify some points, beginning by saying that the proposed system will still only apply to candidates with "serious" backing. "Phil Stanford aside, you cannot get 1,000 people to give you $5 unless you work very hard."

He also attempted to blunt Dave Lister's complaint about funding the system. Sten said that the proposal would be funded through a surcharge on all City bureaus, but that (referencing the "colors of money" argument) "you cannot take a small amount out of the Water Bureau and spend it on police."

We will admit, since we ourselves have noted the "color of money" argument, that this wasn't not adequately explained. In essence, we imagine that Lister's response would be this: Well, why can't we have a cross-Bureau surcharge to hire police officers? That's sort of the open question here, and we didn't see it answered particularly clearly. There may be an answer -- we just didn't hear it given.

It was at this point that Sten mentioned the citizens commission included in the proposal as likely being the party responsible for addressing the unlikely possibility of a massive number of participating candidates by reducing the amount given to each candidate, thereby not increasing the costs of the system.

The second reading and likely vote on the proposal is intended to occur sometime after the budget process is complete, and is expected to be sometime in May.

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