Moose Jaw Times-Herald: New bylaw in the works for campaign transparency

Expense and contribution regulations to be created in city bylaw

During Monday's council meeting,
Coun. Don Mitchell discusses his motion
regarding campaign contributions and
expenses disclosure and expense limits.
Times-Herald photo by Lisa Goudy

By Lisa Goudy

A new bylaw is officially in the works for public disclosure of election campaign expenses and contributions.

During Monday’s regular council meeting, council voted in favour of two of four parts of Coun. Don Mitchell’s motion to introduce a bylaw to address election contribution disclosure and expense limits for mayoral and council candidates. While the basic initiation of creating a bylaw was approved unanimously, there was some dissent on certain details.

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In city clerk/solicitor Myron Gulka-Tiechko’s report to council, it stated the public policy underlying that type of bylaw is to have transparency to “maintain a level playing field” and to avoid the situation where a “special interest can exert exceptional influence.”

In the report an extreme example was that a land developer could provide a large contribution to a certain candidate to allow the candidate to do extensive advertising, increasing name recognition and likely election prospects.

Under the bylaw, the developer contribution would be public record and there would be more public scrutiny.

In Saskatchewan, Regina and Saskatoon are the only cities with spending limit and campaign disclosure bylaws. Their bylaws dictate the contributions and expenses must be disclosed in a defined period after voting day. In Regina, the mayoral spending limit is $62,635 and $10,439 for council candidates. Those figures are adjusted annually based on the consumer price index.

In Saskatoon, the mayoral spending limit is 75 cents per resident and ten per cent of that figure for councillors. For example, if a population were 235,000 the mayoral limit would be $176,250 and $17,625 for councillors. Election reporting must be audited for the mayoral candidates.

The reason other cities have not done do is generally that spending is not an issue and there hasn’t been any perception that special interests are undermining the elections. The report said the city would need to consider population size and to consider that councillors will run at-large rather than in wards like in Regina and Saskatoon.

The report stated enforcement of the bylaw would be central. Legislation provides the authority to remove an elected member, including for campaign spending and disclosure breaches. Mitchell’s motion suggested a voluntary survey to all candidates in the most recent election to gather information for an appropriate spending recommendation. However, responses would be voluntary.