Municipal election reform long overdue, but timely change unlikely
BY DAPHNE BRAMHAM, VANCOUVER SUN
More than a month after Premier Gordon Campbell announced that a task force would be formed to make recommendations for modernizing and improving municipal election rules by May 30, 2010, nothing has been done.
There are no terms of reference. There is no budget.
Only two members have been appointed -- Harry Nyce, president of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, and Bill Bennett, minister of community and rural development. It's not even clear whether the task force reports to Bennett or the premier.
The task force's scope is wide, according to the premier's press release. It is supposed to "consider opportunities to adapt the principles of the provincial Election Act to local elections such as disclosure requirements and changes that will improve fairness, accountability, transparency and public participation."
It may also consider the frequency of elections and whether voting rights ought to be extended to business and companies that pay taxes.
It's a writhing can of worms that Campbell wants the task force to subdue in less than five months -- five months that are interrupted by Christmas and the Olympics.
What's clear is that reform is long overdue since the unprecedented spending during the 2008 provincewide vote was followed by an unusually large number of citizens complaints and police investigations into election malfeasance.
(No charges have been laid even though in Central Saanich RCMP recommended 19 charges be laid. In Langley, RCMP found one example of where disclosure regulations were broken, but recommended against charges because investigators decided the group hadn't intended to break the law.)
Candidates' election spending in 15 Metro Vancouver municipalities alone was $7.9 million -- $1.6 million more than the New Democrats spent in the last provincial election.
The reason there's so much money sloshing about is that no other level of government provides as big a bang-for-your-buck.
It takes only six votes on city council to get property rezoned, which can be a windfall worth millions of dollars for developers; six votes to approve lucrative union contracts.
With no serious opponents, Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, for example, spent more than any other Metro mayoralty candidate. He raised $244,836 (much of it from the development industry) and he had $135,790 left over from the previous election.
But that unprecedented $7.9 million doesn't account for spending on nomination bids, only the contributions and spending within the election period. Raymond Louie, for example, spent $244,000 in his unsuccessful bid to be Vision Vancouver's mayoralty candidate.
Determining what kind of limits might be appropriate is difficult since B.C. is unique in maintaining the municipal at-large system. So, there are few working models to draw on.
Seattle -- the only other large city in North America without a ward system -- limits donations by individuals, corporations, unions and groups to no more than $700 over four years. By limiting the size of donations and specifying the time period, it ensures contributors can't secretly fill up political coffers in off-election years.
The Canadian government limits contributions to individuals. According to a recent Yale University study, in some jurisdictions that strategy has the added benefit of increasing voter turnout.
Still, there's the question of whether all individuals are eligible to contribute. Vision Vancouver had a number of large American donors in 2008. Should non-residents be allowed to contribute? And if the task force is looking at residency requirements for donors, shouldn't it also consider whether it's right that candidates don't have to live in the municipalities they want to run?
The task force may also consider extending voting rights to tax-paying corporations and businesses. If it does, is it fair that multinational corporations might be able to vote, but not donate to campaigns?
Then, there's the transparency question.
Candidates are required to file financial disclosure statements, but public access to those filings varies widely.
Langley District forbids photocopying and allows people to view the documents for only an hour at a time. Vancouver's disclosure forms are on the city's website. Surrey put the disclosures on its website, but only for a limited time. Port Coquitlam destroyed all of its disclosures prior to 2008.
Another gaping legislative hole is that the disclosure rules do not apply to referendum votes even though campaigns can cost tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars because a lot can be at stake -- the Olympics, for example. Or, as Cranbrook voters will decide later this month, the annexation of land that will more than double the city's current footprint and massively enrich the property owners.
If the task force can agree on election finance reform, it will be useless without better oversight, enforcement and stiffer penalties.
The premier says Elections BC will take that on. But that too requires legislation. And Elections BC can't do the work without more money and, likely, more staff. Yet, there's been no hint that the money is available.
It will be near miraculous if the task force can deal with all of those issues and it will still have only scratched the surface of electoral reform. Still it would be a good start. But time's short, premier. You need to get this task force going.
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