Background For City of
Cincinnati Issue 46*
Locally, the Leagueof Women Voters
took the lead in the spring of 1994 in promoting the successful
passage of a Charter Amendment that gave the City of Cincinnati home
rule powers to adopt campaign finance reform legislation.
Subsequently, the League sought to promote the adoption of local
campaign finance proposals. Several campaign finance proposals were
passed by city council though the municipal ordinance process, but
they were later eliminated as a result of court challenges or a
later vote of council to rescind. By 1999, lacking success at the
ordinance level, the League in conjunction with a coalition of other
local groups developed and promoted a Charter Amendment which
eventually came to be known as the Fair Elections Amendment, in the
belief that passing a charter amendment would be the more assured
route to achieving and retaining campaign finance reform. The
groups eventually involved in the Fair Elections Amendment Coalition
included the following: AFL-CIO, Appalachian PAC, Cincinnati
Women’s Political Caucus, Charter Committee, Citizens for Civic
Renewal, Citizens Policy Center, Coalition of Neighborhoods, Common
Cause, Dollars and Democracy, Interfaith Alliance, League of Women
Voters, NAACP, Ohio Citizen Action, Woman’s City Club. This
coalition, in which the League played a very prominent role, was
successful in making its case to the voters and the Amendment passed
in November 2001. It is now Article XIII. (It should be noted that
the parts of the original Article XIII dealing with public financing
were eliminated as the result of a the passage of a charter
amendment in November 2002.)
Current Charter Amendment Proposal (Issue
46):
The proposed amendment would eliminate
the two additional reporting requirements contained in Section 2, a
60 day reporting requirement of contributions and expenditures
(early September) and a conditional 20 day reporting requirement (in
the 20 day period before the election any contribution that causes
the total contributions from a contributor to exceed $500 must be
reported within 5 days to the Cincinnati Elections Commission and
the Hamilton County Board of Elections). All that would be left
would be the state required report due at the end of July to cover
all contributions and expenditures up to the end of June and the
state required report due 38 days after the election to cover
everything contributed and spent since the July report to 30 days
after the election.
The proposed amendment would also add an
extra reporting requirement for mayoral races in the interim between
the primary and the general election for mayor. The two successful
mayoral primary candidates would be required to file a report of
contributions and expenditures on the 7th day after the
mayoral primary election.
Reasons to Oppose:
The original reasons for including the
additional reporting requirements have not lost their validity.
Voters should be able to know how much and who it is from that is
going into each candidate’s campaign so they make a more informed
decision. Both transparency and timeliness are necessary
ingredients to promoting “the public’s right to know”. The gap
between the July reporting requirement and the 38 days after the
election reporting requirement is just too great – most of the
relevant campaign contribution and expenditures on which to base an
informed judgment come in this period. A major rationale by the
supporters of the amendment is that the additional reporting
requirements do not add information. While it is true that under
the proposed changes the voters will eventually get all the
information, this information loses its primary value when it can
only be known after the election.
A good feature of the proposal is the
additional reporting requirement in mayoral elections. It should be
noted that this only reinforces the case for the need for timely
disclosure of campaign finance information. It should not be
limited to mayoral elections. Further, this proposal for adding a
report in mayoral races could be handled by simply passing an
ordinance. It does not require a charter amendment.
There is currently an additional filing
requirement for council candidates over and above the two required
by the state and the two interim charter-mandated ones. This one is
mandated by municipal ordinance – a 120 day reporting requirement,
which virtually coincides with the early state-required report. The
existence of this additional filing requirement has probably added
to the sense among proponents of the changes that there are too many
reporting requirements that are “unnecessary” and “confusing” and
therefore “let’s do away with some of them”. But if there is a
reporting requirement that might be accurately characterized by the
terms “unnecessary” and “confusing”, it is this one and the issue
can be easily dealt with by passing a municipal ordinance
eliminating it.
To sum up the case against and the reason
to oppose Issue 46 is that in an important sense it whittles away at
an important package of reforms citizens have worked so hard to
achieve, reforms contained in the current Campaign Finance Amendment
aimed at shoring up our democratic system by promoting a more
informed electorate with confidence in the openness and fairness of
the system.
*Prepared by Jane Anderson
Adjunct Associate Professor of Political Science, University of
Cincinnati
University of Cincinnati
These written comments reflect the individual
research of Ms. Anderson and not the University of Cincinnati
