Anson Stevens-Bollen
A flurry of campaign mailers are likely to hit voters’ mailboxes later this year as voters select four councilors. But whether third-party spending must be reported would change under a new proposal.
Santa Fe’s mayor and City Council walked back proposed changes to local campaign finance rules on Wednesday after the municipal ethics board raised concerns that the update—just months before an election—could lead to less transparency about who is spending money to influence voters.
City Clerk Kristine Bustos-Mihelcic backed the 49-page election code rewrite as a means of simplifying Santa Fe’s labyrinthine campaign rules and more closely aligning local policies with state law.
But members of the Ethics and Campaign Review Board raised concerns during a hearing March 9 that the proposal tossed out too many of the city’s rules.
The original proposal called for narrowing the city’s definition of “independent expenditure,” for example—that is, advertising and other campaigning by advocacy groups that are not formally connected to a candidate’s campaign.
The city’s current rules require groups that spend more than $500 on any form of “public communication” supporting or opposing a candidate to report the spending and identify anyone who donated over $25 to the efforts. But the proposed changes would have altered existing law to only require the disclosure of spending on advertising, not other campaign activities.
The proposed changes would also have cut back the city’s rules on contributions and other expenditures.
District 2 Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth, the bill’s sponsor, introduced an amendment Wednesday night to undo those proposed changes.
Romero-Wirth nodded to the ethics board’s concerns that the proposal could have made the city’s campaign finance rules “too narrow and didn’t take into account all the work they have done in thinking about all the different possibilities.”
The mayor and council agreed with Romero-Wirth’s amendment to scale back the bill.
The original legislation would have also ended the requirement that campaign signs include a phone number. That also hit the chopping block, as the mayor and council agreed to a proposal by District 1 Councilor Signe Lindell to keep that requirement in city code, which backers argue helps local residents easily resolve problems with signs placed in obstructive spots around town.
The scaled back version of the bill will still streamline the city’s election code in a few ways, such as by eliminating the position of deputy campaign treasurer. It also changes the schedule for filing campaign finance reports, moving the first reporting period to 60 days from 45 days before an election.
And the bill would expressly allow publicly financed candidates to collect contributions electronically, an addition Councilor Renee Villarreal said was overdue for office seekers who have to collect $5 donations from backers.
The changes come just as the city heads into an election season that will see voters select four councilors, potentially reshaping the nine-member governing body. Candidates who want to attempt to qualify for public campaign financing are scheduled to first gain access to materials about the process May 8.
The mayor and council are expected to vote on the proposed changes April 26.
Bustos-Mihelcic said she plans to propose further updates to the campaign code in the coming year.
