"This is a city where people make things happen."

Campaign Reform

Read some of Don's previous blog posts on this topic:


Disclosure of Contributions: 2010 Campaign posted October 15th, 2010 in 2010 Campaign, Campaign Reform

I’m proud of my record on pursuing municipal campaign finance reform (see here, here and here). In Calgary, a good number of campaigns have agreed to disclose their funding in advance of the election, and I expect this will become common practice here in the future.

I see value in being transparent about the donations we’ve accepted prior to election day, so my team and I have decided to close off donations today at noon (the last business day of the campaign) and post the tally. We believe it is accurate, but reserve the right to amend it if we discover an error prior to filing our official disclosure statement.

I think it’s important to disclose where the funds came from that helped run this campaign. By law all candidates must do this, win or lose, but not until long after election day.

Other than selling tickets to fundraising events, none of these contributions were solicited. These are simply people and groups who support my vision and would like to see me re-elected.

Consistent with the recent changes to the Local Authorities Election Act, donations $100 and greater must be identified; donations less than $100 need only be totalled together. We have presented the information in this format. It is downloadable as a pdf here.

March tidbits posted March 25th, 2010 in 2007-2010 Term, Campaign Reform, Education & Innovation, Transit

A couple of updates: a project I’ve been working on called the Edmonton Learning City Initiative became an official Council Initiative today. More on this to come in May and June. Here are the terms of reference.

The mayor has put speculation to rest an announced that he will run again. The pundits are already reading the entrails to see what impact it will have on this fall’s elections. I am glad the question is settled. Everyone seemed to be in a much calmer state of mind at Council today.

Also the province announced further changes to Municipal campaign finance reform via Bill 9. It proposes to fix some of the implementation issues with the previous bill, but it also relaxes limist on contributions per person/corporation/union to $5000 per year instead of $5000 per campaign period (which is three years). Might as well not have a limit. I have a motion establishing a $5000 contribution limit for Edmonton that was postponed until we get an update on Bill 9.

Last week I was able to take a tour of two of our fleet facilities – the Westwood transit garage and the Davies garage where most of the rest of the fleet gets fixed. There are more than 4000 vehicles in the city fleet and they all need tires, oil changes, and sometimes a whole lot more than that. Got some neat pics with the iPhone.

These buses will be back on the road for afternoon rush hour.

I was impressed with how much our staff can handle. This bus was in a head on collision and is being rebuilt. Insurance will cover the cost above the deductible.

We have 150 trucks that can swap out sander units (silver) for dump truck bins (white, lower right), and water trucks and asphalt hauling bins - Transformers-style. Designed and custom built by the city's own fabrication shop.

Tomorrow I will be doing a site visit of Quesnell bridge to see construction progress. Did I mention I love field trips? Have since elementary school.

Campaign Finance Reform: Boring but Consequential posted February 18th, 2010 in 2007 Campaign, 2007-2010 Term, Campaign Reform

Earlier in February, the provincial government enacted most of the provisions of MLA Jeff Johnson’s 2009 Legislative Session private member’s Bill 203, the Local Authorities Election (Finance and Contribution Disclosure) Act.

I had previously requested a report on what Bill 203 could mean for Edmonton, as well as on changes that Calgary had enacted in the fall; on February 17, City staff provided the report. Some of the Act’s implementation details are quite ridiculous, given the nearness of the 2010 election.

The City report included a draft letter to the province articulating a number of concerns and questions, although the letter was updated considerably after debate. I can’t yet locate a copy of the updated letter on the city’s website. This was the original draft.

The revised letter approved by Council called for the outright repeal of the Act and included some additional questions and concerns about the audit requirements, about whose onus it is to establish which corporations are related for purposes of the $5,000 contribution limit, and about whether volunteer hours count as campaign contributions. I supported sending the letter, though I didn’t agree with all the points in it.

I spoke against asking for repeal of the whole Act, since I think the principles of the Act are good. Most of the contribution disclosure requirements and rules about campaign surpluses mirror our existing Disclosure Bylaw. Really the only additions are a $5,000 limit to contributions by a person, corporation, or labour group to a given campaign, and a requirement to disclose the identity of anyone whose contribution exceeds $100 per three-year period (under our current bylaw, this threshold is $300).

I spoke in support of the contribution limits and in support of the $100 disclosure threshold. Sadly, this was not reported in yesterday’s Journal story (nor the Sun story), so it appeared as if all of Council opposed the whole bill, which is not quite accurate. In any case, I had intended to observe these rules in the conduct of my own campaign this fall.

Like my colleagues, I believe there are some poor policies specific to 2010 election implementation, such as the requirement to submit any accumulated surpluses within 90 days of proclamation (that is, by May 3, 2010). The way this is written, any funds raised since the last election must also be handed to the City in trust; a candidate won’t get the funds back until nomination day, which is September 20, 2010. This could unfairly impact a campaign’s cash flow, and it will essentially force all prospective candidates — if they have raised more than $500 — to declare their candidacy by May 3.

The big issue that irks many of my colleagues–and me somewhat, but less so–is the province’s imposition on municipal autonomy. This territoriality came up when I discussed Bill 203 in May last year. To my eyes, incorporating the majority of our Disclosure Bylaw in provincial law is a testament to our city’s leadership in this area and a commentary on Calgary’s comparatively Wild West rules.

Either way, I was more or less dared to put amendments forward to our Disclosure Bylaw if I really think the $5,000 limit and the $100 disclosure threshold are good policy. So I gave Notice of Motion on Wednesday to do just that:

Councillor D. Iveson stated that at the next regular meeting of Council, he will make the following motion:

That Administration bring forward amendments to the Disclosure Bylaw as follows:

a) limiting campaign contributions by any person or corporation to (figure to be added) in any campaign period

b) requiring disclosure of contributions $100 and above from any one contributor during the campaign period, and the disclosure of the total amount of contributions below $100

So we’ll debate this at our March 10 Council meeting.

Campaign Finance Reform posted December 16th, 2009 in 2007-2010 Term, Campaign Reform

Just moved the following motion at Council which was approved unanimously (the controversial discussion will come in late February when the report comes back):

That Admin provide an information report to Council on:

  1. recent bylaw changes in Calgary to disclosure and campaign finance rules coming into effect for the 2010 election (including voluntary commitments) and with a comparison to our current rules,
  2. any other similar substantive changes in other Alberta municipalities that they may be aware of,
  3. any update on the Government’s consideration of Bill 203, the ‘LOCAL AUTHORITIES ELECTION (FINANCE AND CONTRIBUTION DISCLOSURE) AMENDMENT ACT, 2009′

For some background, see this blog post about Council’s ruminations on the Province’s Bill 203 from the spring.

Some background from Calgary is also relevant: This was the first story, and the big change is a $5000 limit to donations from any one part, which jives with Bill 203.

Further clippings of interest:

We’re still better in many respects than either Bill 203 or Calgary in our current practices, but we’re now officially behind when it comes to limits to individual contributions.

Calgary’s also encouraging a voluntary pre-disclosure of all funds raised prior to nomination day.

Campaign Finance Fuss (Bill 203) posted May 29th, 2009 in 2007-2010 Term, Campaign Reform

In March MLA Jeff Johnson (Athabasca-Redwater) told me about a Private Member’s Bill he was moving at the legislature concerning tightening municipal campaign finance rules. I took a look at the bill not long after we spoke and concluded that it was sound in most respects but figured that as a private member’s bill it would not make it that far.

I kept track of it, however, and all of a sudden it had two readings at the legislature and was going to committee of the whole for the next-to-last stage of approval. Significantly, it was garnering approval from all three parties at the legislature. So I gave what we call ‘notice of motion’ at the council meeting two weeks ago, indicating that I wanted to move the following motion at council for debate this week:

That the mayor write to all members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta indicating Council’s support for Bill 203 “Local Authorities Election (Finance and Contribution Disclosure) Amendment Act, 2009 (Johnson)” and requesting that the legislature also enact changes that would enable the tax deductibility of donations to municipal campaigns by private individuals.

I circulated a brief on the bill for my colleagues later that same week, which I’ve posted here as background. I had also discussed the bill with a number of my colleagues, including the mayor, prior to giving the notice of motion, which made their shock and surprise at the bill during our debate on it this week all the more surprising to me (see “Mandel Slams Election Bylaw” from yesterday’s Journal).

Turns out it passed third and final reading at the legislature on Monday, so it’s a done deal [edit for clarity at 12:37pm same day: the bill is through the legislature but awaits formal proclamation]. My motion was designed to shift the debate to leveling the playing field by allowing tax deductability. This is not only fair in the most basic sense of the word, but it levels the playing field between business and citizens, since a campaign contribution from a business is a business expense, and therefore a before-tax expense. For a private individual, it’s an after-tax dollar expense, and that disadvantages the citizen relatively speaking, which is wrong in the most basic sense of the word. But now we’re back to fighting about a law that’s passed, which misses the point.

Most of what the bill calls for is already required through the City of Edmonton’s Disclosure Bylaw:

  • Surpluses from a campaign can be carried forward, but must be spent on a subsequent municipal campaign (not pocketed, as is routinely done in Calgary).
  • Any surpluses remaining when a candidate decides not to run must be surrendered to the municipality or else to a charity of the candidate’s choice.
  • The bill requires disclosure of the names of donors who give more than $100, while our current bylaw requires disclosing identity of donors who give more than $300. This will reduce the practice of related numbered companies donating $299 multiple times.

Bill 203 also sets out slightly more rigid requirements in terms of bookkeeping, and enacts provisions for audit of those books under certain circumstances; I regard both of these as improvements over our rules.

The biggest rule change is a hard contribution limit of $5,000 per entity, which some of my colleagues recoiled against, but I support. Rightly or wrongly, there is a perception of impropriety when businesses or labour make huge contributions to a given candidate. (There is an interesting question about how this applies to unions vs. related companies: is the separate land wing of BigDeveloperX a different entity from the construction wing of BigDeveloperX, and so could each give $5,000 since they are separately incorporated? Labour donations have been limited to $5,000 per candidate per union, not per local, so two CUPE unions couldn’t each contribute unless the total was $5,000 or less.)

Naheed Nenshi from the Better Calgary Campaign wrote a good piece in the Calgary Herald about this all last week, noting a couple of things it doesn’t do: it doesn’t require ‘just-in-time’ disclosure, where campaign donations are disclosed as they are received, or within a short deadline such as a week; it doesn’t establish total spending caps for campaigns (in Ontario and Manitoba there are limits to spending per eligible voter). For the record, I would support both of these reasonable rules.

I think the bill is a good step forward in principle. Concern that municipalities were not directly consulted is valid, but one hopes municipal leaders will be consulted prior to the proclamation of the bill and the implementation of associated regulations.

It was needed because there was no consensus on these kinds of requirements, particularly from Calgary, so in this case I think the province had to step in. Some of my colleagues took affront to the very notion of the the province stepping in to regulate the affairs of municipal government. Ideally this would not be necessary, but it was in Calgary and I don’t believe there was appetite on Edmonton council to consider contribution limits, so I’m going to chalk this up to good leadership from the province.

I took it all as a compliment since so much of the nuts and bolts of it is modeled after the city’s current practice.

In the end, Council instead voted to instruct the mayor to express council’s displeasure at not being consulted. I wasn’t happy with the turn the debate took, but I missed the tail end of it as I ran home to be with my wife and two-day-old. Hopefully we’ll get another crack at it at council.

I may not be able to convince enough of my colleagues that municipal campaign finance reform is important, but the province gets it and I think the public will too.