GELFAND’S WORLD-Everyone understands that developers own our city government. Sure, there are some officials here and there who are upright and independent, but recent history shows that the developers typically get their way in spite of public opposition. Whether it is a zoning change for an office tower or the required permits for a new mall, the rich guys win the day. Perhaps it's just the way of the world, because before the developers held the deed to the city, it was the oil companies, and before the oil companies it was the railroads.
Voters and reform groups have tried their best to make local government more honest, but the reality of running expensive election campaigns gets in the way.
The problem, to quote a classic movie line cackled by a mustachioed villain, is that it's all legal. As numerous pundits have pointed out, when it comes to how state and local governments are run, it's not what is illegal, but what is legal that is the issue.
That's because the legality of campaign contributions has resulted in mayoral and City Council elections that run into the multi-hundreds of thousands of dollars, except when they run into the multi-millions of dollars. And the winning candidates owe the donors at the political level, even if not at a legal or moral level. The results are costly to the rest of us, whether through loss of tax revenues, sweetheart deals, or direct costs in the form of sales taxes that are needed to pay for upgrades to city services, the ones that are made necessary by increased development.
What's to be done?
At one point, limiting campaign contributions was a partial solution. Then the Supreme Court got in the way, and now when it comes to any election, we have a free-for-all instead of having administrative restraints. It's not a very intelligent way for us to choose who will rule over us. So we have to try something else.
I would like to offer a modest suggestion.
First, let me tell you what it isn't. This proposal is not based on limiting campaign contributions. It ignores the effects of independent expenditure campaigns. In fact, my proposal basically ignores the question of who wins elections, because the candidates who raise the most campaign money are more likely to win. That's also the way of the world.
So what is it? The secret is that while we can't regulate how City Council members get elected, we can regulate what they are allowed to do once they are in office.
Conflict of interest rules currently apply to direct personal financial interest in an item coming before the Council. We should extend that rule. We should treat campaign contributions in a similar way. If a developer gives you a campaign contribution to help you win an election, our law should treat that as equivalent to a personal loan or gift.
After all, the point of getting elected and reelected goes beyond civic duty. In Los Angeles, it is a ticket to a $184,000 salary, lots of perks, and a pretty good pension after you serve two and a half terms.
Campaign contributions are money in your pocket -- a lot of money -- if you win.
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Because of Supreme Court doctrine, we can't enforce most laws that limit the ability of wealthy interests to engage in independent expenditure campaigns. But there shouldn't be a problem with redefining what City Council members and state legislators are allowed to vote on. Let's make it a rule that campaign contributions can, under some circumstances, be counted as legal conflicts of interest, and any elected official can be called on that conflict of interest.
We probably don't want to make every City Council vote subject to this rule. That would needlessly complicate things, and would tend to discourage small donors from expressing their views through donations. It's the truly mercenary donations we ought to regulate.
It would work like this: Any City Council member is entitled to vote on any item, regardless of the existence of a relevant campaign contribution, unless someone objects. The daily work would get done. But for the votes that would seriously disadvantage some part of the public, the aggrieved side could assert that a conflict of interest exists, and that the Councilmember should refrain from participating in the discussion or vote.
Under this system, the wealthy and the special interests can buy all the councilmen they like. They just can't expect the Council to be able to do favors in return, particularly in the face of public resistance.
Of course this sort of approach would be difficult to get passed by the City Council. It would have to be done by ballot initiative. But it's long since time that we got together, wrote a package of reforms, and put them out for voter signatures. Maybe we would want to do five or six initiatives at the same time. This rule would be one of them. I think that you and I can think of lots more, starting with a reform of the parking rules and fines.
Some would argue that negating the ability of big money interests to control local government would be a disincentive to their making campaign donations. That would, of course, be a good thing. Perhaps it would be a step towards full public financing of city elections.
There is also the question as to whether this kind of rule would be tolerated by the courts. We've certainly seen a lot of strange decisions on campaign finance from this Supreme Court, but time goes on, and with it the makeup of the Court. We can hope that the legal climate improves.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 62
Pub: Jul 31, 2015
