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With 2002 election figures showing that Berkeley candidates laid out roughly $720,000 on city campaigns—roughly one-third more than in 1998—the City Council Tuesday will debate a plan to make Berkeley the first city in the nation to fully finance municipal elections. 

Details of the plan and the funding source haven’t been completed, but advocates insist public funding is the best way to open public office to all of Berkeley and keep some special interests from infesting the political process. 

“I think it’s the right thing for the city to do,” said Mayor Tom Bates, who along with Councilmembers Linda Maio, Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring want staff to devise a plan in time to place on the November ballot.  

“Right now you need to know a lot of people with money or be wealthy yourself to have a chance,” said Bates, who favors increasing parking fines to pay for the proposal.  

Bates intimately understands the money crunch faced by Berkeley politicians. He loaned his campaign $76,000 of $236,385 total spent in his bid in 2002 to unseat former mayor Shirley Dean. After 16 months, Bates has only repaid approximately $17,000.  

The city’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission kick-started public financing for campaigns last January when, at the urging of Bates, Spring and Maio, it backed the concept. The Commission rejected recommending partial funding systems currently in place in several cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, as well as turning down a proposal to raise the maximum individual donation above $250. 

The commission declined to endorse a specific scheme for public financing, but councilmembers may model it after a plan designed specifically for Berkeley by the Center for Governmental Studies at UCLA. 

That plan, included in a report to the City Council, would set spending limits at $150,000 per mayoral candidate and $20,000 per City Council candidate with less money allocated to candidates for the rent board, school board and auditor. If a candidate opted out and spent more than regulated amount, the city would provide grants to other candidates in the race to make up the difference up to 200 percent of the designated public spending limit for the office. To vet out vanity candidates, public money would only be offered to candidates who raised $5 contributions from a specified number of Berkeley residents. 

Depending on the number of candidates, the plan projects total costs to the city for the 2006 election ranging from between $1.4 million to nearly $4 million. 

Those numbers come out to less than $6 per resident, per year—about two-tenths of a percent of all city spending, said Dan Newman, vice chair of the Fair Campaign Practices Commission.  

That’s too much for Councilmember Betty Olds. “The plan is just terrible,” she said. “If we’re going to tax people to death, it’s ridiculous to expect them to finance our campaigns.”  

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who in 2002 raised $73,000 to win a run-off election in District 8, said he could support public financing for the mayor’s race, but feared an even playing field could actually bolster incumbents who enjoy better name recognition. To encourage more residents to run for office, he preferred term limits and higher salaries for elected officials. 

Arizona and Maine have both passed laws to fully fund statewide campaigns, while several cities, like San Francisco provide matching funds for candidates that agree to spending limits. 

Also on Tuesday’s agenda is a proposal from Dona Spring to shore up rules governing height bonuses given to developers who offer cultural space. After the Gaia Building, owned by Panoramic Interests, was permitted two extra stories for a proposed cultural space that still remains vacant, Spring wants to tighten the rules to punish developers who do not fill the space with nonprofit organizations and extend Berkeley’s low income housing rooms to cover the additional floors of housing. 

On the consent calendar, the City Council will be asked to support a resolution opposing a constitutional amendment banning marriage rights for same-sex couples, and a second resolution encouraging the new ownership of the Claremont Hotel and Spa to bring in a new management team to avoid previous problems with the community and unions.