It seems like a lot of trouble to go to, imposing provincewide spending limits on all local elections when only a handful of them spend enough to raise eyebrows even slightly.
But the drive was to keep things fair and curb any potential for untoward spending. So a committee of MLAs has imposed a formula for spending limits that will eliminate any chance - for better or worse - of someone going all Michael Bloomberg in a B.C. civic election. Bloomberg dropped $268 million on three successful mayoral runs in New York, all of it out of his own pocket.
He set the gold standard for lavish campaign financing, outspending his opponents by up to 14-1 margins.
It left any number of people outraged at the unfairness of it all. On the other hand, having a billionaire as mayor included certain advantages. If a city program came up short, he funded it himself, to the tune of hundreds of millions. He took only $1 of his $225,000 annual salary for 12 years. And His Exorbitancy bought his staff breakfast and lunch every day out of his own pocket.
That's not how we roll in Canada, to begin with. And B.C. will be taking further steps to dampen even the slightest prospect of money playing an unseemly role in a civic election. If you're a moneybags on a power trip laying plans to buy your way into the mayor's chair in Duncan or Gold River or any town under 10,000 in population, tough luck.
The government will likely have new spending limits in time for the 2018 municipal elections that limit mayoral candidates to $10,000.
This will mean almost nothing to anyone in any of those towns, because the vast majority of mayoral candidates don't even come close to that limit. Figures from the 2014 campaign show only nine of 255 candidates in 102 mayoral races spent more than $10,000. The average spending was $2,700, and 46 of them spent nothing at all.
It's in the towns and cities with more than 10,000 people that the limits set by the committee of MLAs last week might have more impact. In the 2014 contests, 15 of the 202 mayoral candidates around B.C. spent between $50,000 and $100,000. Nine of them reported spending more than $100,000. Those 24 and a handful more would be curbed if they ran similar campaigns next time around.
The spending range for the entire group of contestants ranged from zero to $313,000. It's the wild outliers in the upper reaches of the spectrum that have preoccupied people who have been studying limits for the past several years.
The committee concluded: "Only anomalous amounts of spending by outliers needed to be rolled back."
After much debate, the committee decided to recommend a formula that links spending directly to population in jurisdictions over the 10,000 mark.
They're allowed $1 per capita up to the first 15,000 and then less for subsequent increments. In Victoria, the limit would be about $52,000. All three of the 2014 candidates spent a lot more than that. The limit in Saanich and similar-sized Kelowna would be just over $70,000. City of Vancouver mayoral candidates would be held to about $203,000.
There are also comparable limits coming for third-party advertisers, who will be capped at five per cent of the mayoral limit, with a $150,000 overarching cumulative limit. Limiting third-party spending always seems to result in free-speech court challenges, and these new ones might do the same.
Campaign spending sprees are few and far between in B.C. civic races. But there have been just enough to raise suspicions to the point where the proposed limits will erase the chances of them happening again.
Just So You Know: In the interests of disclosure, the big losers in this plan at first glance are the media.
Advertising is a big component of most campaign spending, so reducing campaign spending would probably equate to reducing advertising spending. The three 2014 mayoral candidates in Victoria were collectively $168,000 over the limits, had they been in effect at the time.
Some of that money was spent on advertising, and it won't be available next time.
