Long Beach Voters Did Get It Right : June campaign-finance reform has model elements--why turn back the clock?

Long Beach voters last June approved a campaign finance reform that was a model of what such a reform should include. Last week, council members Doris Topsy-Elvord, Jeffrey Kellogg and Jenny Oropeza led an attack on the new law. We urge the voters of Long Beach to see to it that their law does not suffer the death of a thousand political cuts.

The key features of the new law include:

--A strict limit on contributions; $250 per election to a candidate for the City Council, $500 per election to a candidate for mayor.

--A strict limit on spending; City Council candidates held to $40,000 in the primary and $20,000 in the runoff election, mayoral candidates held to $200,000 in the primary and $100,000 in the runoff.

--Partial public funding; though only small contributions are matched, candidates may receive up to one-third of the expenditure limit in public funds for the primary and up to one-half of the limit in the runoff. Because of the spending caps, the overall cost of the funding part of the reform is low: $250,000 per year or about 50 cents per resident per year.

--A time limit on fund raising; candidates and officeholders would be barred from accepting money except during an 18-month election cycle.

The attack was aimed at the last of these features. The anti-reformers want officeholders to be free to raise funds year-round. They would eliminate a subsidiary provision that requires candidates to return to the Long Beach general fund any campaign funds in excess of $5,000. Ten thousand dollars strikes them as a preferable ceiling, and they would like to be free to raise another $10,000 per year while in office.

This kind of “officeholder account” is far from unknown in politics. Incumbents defend the practice as necessary if they are to perform private services for their constituents, and even under the often-praised Los Angeles ethics reform law, relatively modest officeholder accounts are permitted. But it must be admitted, even by supporters of the practice, that there is a potential for abuse, and Long Beach has no ethics code comparable to Los Angeles’.

At the very least, if Long Beach council members need officeholder accounts at all, they should offer public arguments--and hear rebuttals--about how large such accounts need to be and how the money may be spent. At a meeting last Tuesday, the council voted 6 to 2 to adopt the anti-reform, but final approval has not yet come. We urge the council to stay the course set by the voters last June. Long Beach is onto something very valuable here.