As I reported in one of my first blog posts in September, there is some movement toward enacting public financing of campaigns in Philadelphia. As they had promised, Council members Verna and Tasco submitted a resolution to hold informational hearings on the subject. The first one took place last Wednesday. A number of people testified, all of them in favor of public campaign financing. I have posted a page that contains my testimony, which gives three reasons why we public financing of campaigns. My conclusions sums it up:
I conclude, then, that if we want to keep local democracy intact, we need to move sooner rather than to replace our private system of financing political campaigns with a system of public campaign finance. We need to do this to create a level playing field for those who seek contracts and other benefits from government, to guarantee that the voice of the poor is heard as loudly as the voice of the rich in City Hall, and to insure that qualified people from all ethnic and racial groups, and from every social class, have the opportunity to win election to office.
Zack Stahlberg from the Committee of Seventy, Brett Mandel of Philadelphia Forward, Angel Ortiz, and a Temple student, David Corbett, who is the leader of the local chapter of a nation-wide campaign finance reform group, Democracy Matters, testified in favor of public financing as well. An official from the board that runs the public financing system in New York testified in detail about the New York approach.
Contrary to the impression given in the Daily News, I thought that council members were reasonably supportive in their comments. As he usually does, Wilson Goode asked pointed questions about the impact of public financing as did, from time to time, Marian Tasco and Frank DiCicco. Considering that we are talking about a major transformation of our political system, that could affect the political future of council people, I would expect no less. I think, however, that a bill can be crafted that meets most of the problems and difficulties to which their questions pointed.
A second hearing will be held on June 5. That one will look more at the various options on campaign finance reform. I plan to testify then and will try to post in this space about some of those options before the hearing.