Who is Good Governance? Wednesday, December 2, 2009 |
By Susan McIver
Special to the Herald
Summerland resident Mark Ziebarth has stepped forward to claim responsibility for sponsoring ads which have been at the heart of the controversy over campaign financing in the 2008 Summerland municipal elections.
Mayor Janice Perrino had announced in a radio interview on Monday morning that someone had come forward on Saturday.
The identity of Ziebarth was made public later in the day in an on-line edition of a local newspaper.
Ziebarth was behind the Citizens for Smart Governance ads which ran in local newspapers for several weeks before the election in support of the current mayor and councillors.
A front-page opinion piece in Friday‘s Vancouver Sun suggested Summerland council has no legitimacy because of illegal donations, quoting a political scientist at Simon Fraser University.
The opinion is based on the Local Government Act which says that it is illegal for candidates to take anonymous donations of more than $50.
The mayor and five of the six stated in their financial disclosures that they took donations for newspaper ads, card and flyers from anonymous sources that exceeded the legal threshold.
Coun. Sam Elia reported a cash contribution from Ziebarth for the same amount on the same day as his colleagues stated they had received an anonymous donation for a newspaper ad that ran on Nov. 14.
It is also illegal to give anonymous donations of more than $50.
A press release Tuesday included the statement, "In an effort to be open, honest and transparent, and on the advice of the chief election officer, council members included acknowledgement of ads place by an anonymous party in their campaign financing disclosure statements for the 2008 local government elections."
During the several week course of the anonymous ads the mayor and councillors did not, as far as is known, publicly disassociate themselves from the ads.
"I chose to run an independent expenditure campaign," Ziebarth told the Summerland Review‘s online service.
Ziebarth also said that he wanted to present his own message without having it pass through a candidate‘s advertising campaign.
He claims that because he paid for the ads himself and did not accept campaign contributions from other people he was not required to register as a campaign organizer.
"Citizens for Smart Governance didn‘t illegally fund the municipal elections. Citizens for Smart Governance didn‘t solicit or accept funds from third-parties to advance a specific agenda or candidate and Citizens for Smart Governance wasn‘t required to register by the Local Government Act," Ziebarth is quoted as saying in the online article.
Regardless of whether Ziebarth‘s interpretation of the act is correct, the fact remains that thousands of dollars were spent in the 2008 municipal elections by an unknown source to influence the outcome.
The anonymity of the source of the ads, not Ziebarth‘s right to promote his own opinion, remains the issue.
The campaign financing section of the candidate‘s guide to local elections states "Campaign financing disclosure rules were introduced to provide British Columbians with more information as to who is financially supporting each candidate, and how much candidates in local elections spend in the pursuit of elected office".
While Ziebarth says he is solely responsible for payment of the ads, a group calling itself Citizens for Smart Governance existed as admitted by acting mayor Gordon Clark when questioned by James Miller at a council meeting in early November.
"I identified myself with that group, as did a number of others, to take a position during the election," Clark said when Miller asked about his standing with the group.
Ziebarth did not reveal his motivation for keeping his financial backing of the group a secret until the past few days.
A 2008 amendment to the Local Government Act requiring that any person or group spending $500 or more is legally required to register with the chief electoral officer a either a campaign organizer or an elector organization has been the focus of a series of articles about municipal elections in the Vancouver Sun.
Gillian Matthews, Summerland‘s chief electoral officer and corporate officer, confirmed this requirement in an interview early last week.
Matthews is subsequently quoted as saying that Ziebarth does not fall under the category of an organization or under the category of an individual running a campaign and collecting donations.
Perrino declared a donation of $250 from Bongarde Media on Nov. 5, 2009.
Ziebarth became owner of Bongarde in 2003. He won the Business Leader of the Year Award in 2008, the highest honoured presented by the Penticton and Wine Country Chamber of Commerce.
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