Afficionados of democracy ~

1. Some good news and some bad. After removing $5 million from the public financing fund last year, which he promised to restore this year, the mayor has instead cut an additional $1.4 - $2.3 million from the fund. Unfortunately, we can't tell exactly how much, since the mayor's proposed budget document actually has no published information about this cut whatsoever. We only were able to find out through sources in City Hall.  While the mayor claims that this is only in response to the budget crisis and that the money will be returned later, the mayor actually tried to raid $6 million from the fund before the budget troubles even hit, 3 years ago.*

If this decision stands, we will be far short of the minimum amount needed to have public financing for mayoral candidates in 2011.

Fortunately, Budget Committee Chair John Avalos has strongly confirmed his pledge to restore the funding for the program! Two other members of the Budget Committee, David Campos and Ross Mirkarimi have also confirmed their commitment, so with those three we have a majority. Bevan Dufty has also been a supporter of public financing in the past, so we hope he'll join the other members of the committee in supporting this. While we can't know for sure until the budget passes, it seems likely that we have the votes to restore the funding.

Steve Jones at the Guardian wrote a blog post on the situation today: http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/06/newsoms_shell_game_part_i_publ.html

In the mean time, if you haven't already, it would help to send to emails to Avalos, Campos & Mirkarimi strongly thanking them for their commitment to restore the funds:

ross.mirkarimi@sfgov.org
david.campos@sfgov.org
john.avalos@sfgov.org


2. Also, in lighter news, we recently arranged an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News about the federal Fair Elections Now Act, penned by our esteemed Assemblyman Tom Ammiano: http://www.mercurynews.com/elections/ci_12386335


Rob Arnow
--
San Franciscans for Voter Owned Elections
www.voterownedelections.org
415-552-2229


“I also believe that if we’re serious about change, we need to have a real discussion about public financing for congressional elections. Because even if we can stop lobbyists from buying us lunch or taking us out on junkets, they’ll still be able to attend our fundraisers – and that’s access the average American doesn’t have.”

— Barack Obama, August 2, 2007


*The money was slated to be used for a program that according to the mayor's own press release was going to cost $525,000 – begging the question of why they wanted to remove $6 million from the fund: http://sfgov.org/site/mayor_index.asp?id=67895