A few days after the November general election, and the tremendous victory for the Ethics Reform Charter Change, I started talking to other members of the Ethics Reform Coalition about public financing of our political campaigns. Many of us had talked on and off about public financing of campaigns as our ultimate goal. But few thought that we had any real chance of adopting this dramatic reform anytime soon. First there was the business of creating an independent Ethics Board and strengthening limits on campaign contributions for those who receive contracts and other benefits from the city. Legislation to accomplish these tasks was adopted by City Council in early December of last year. Even when that was done, most reformers thought we were in for a long wait before public financing of campaigns came to Philadelphia.
I didn’t think we would have to wait so long and it looks like we won’t
Inlate November it seemed to me that between the corruption scandals and the tremendous outpouring of support for the Ethics Reform Campaign in the general election, the pressure for reform was building. So in December I started lobbying some council members and Mayoral candidates to see if there was any support for public financing. I found a great deal of interest in the idea. But we were still at that interesting point in the life of a political idea in which few of the potential supporters knew of each other and in which we were waiting for some enterprising politician to take the lead on the issue. The wait is not over. But Philadelphia took a major step towards public financing yesterday when we found three politicians to champion the cause.
Dwight Evans, Marian Tasco and Anna Verna take the lead
State Representative Dwight Evans, Council members Verna, Tasco, Kenney, Ramos, Reynolds-Brown, and Rizzo and thirty or so civic groups including Neighborhood Networks took part in a press conference in support of public financing of our campaigns. No one has put forward or endorsed a specific plan for public financing. But Rep. Evans introduced legislation in the General Assembly that would, for the first time, clearly give Philadelphia the right to regulate campaign contribution and establish a system of public financing of campaigns. And Council members Verna and Tasco introduced a resolution to hold hearings on public financing of political campaigns before the committee of the whole of Council.
Among the thirty groups appearing at the press conference were AFSCME DC 47, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, the Pennsylvania Economy League, Philadelphia Forward, the NAACP, the African American Chamber of Commerce, the League of Women Voters, the Urban League, the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, and the Committee of Seventy.
Why We Need Public Financing
Public financing is the keystone of political reform. Limiting campaign contributions on the part of those who receive contracts of other benefits from the city is a start. But it has two flaws. First, these limitations are too easy to skirt. Many small contributions can be officially or unofficially bundled. For example, instead of making one $250,000 contribution to a Mayoral candidate, a major law with 100 lawyers can make 100 contributions of $2,500. In addition, the cumulative effects of giving campaign contributions to candidates for practically every city office are large. If we want to clean up both the reality and the perception that city contracts and financial incentives are given as the result of pay to play, we have to make sure that no city contractor can spread $150,000 to $200,000 around every year to lots of different politicians, all of whom work together to unfairly help that business.
Second, limiting campaign contributions does little to balance the playing field between rich and poor and between those who are connected and those who are not. Very few people in Philadelphia can contribute $100 to a political candidate let alone the maximum of $2500 for an individual or $10,000 for a PAC or business. When campaigns are financed by private contributions, the well-off, the connected, the developers and businesses who need rulings or subsidies from the city have an enormous advantage over average citizens or neighborhood groups and civic organizations. Public financing of campaigns is the best way to right this balance.
As we say in Neighborhood Networks, the power of organized people should be greater than the power of organized money. Public financing is an important step towards organizng money on behalf of, rather than against the people.