On Monday, May 13 the Council will continue its consideration of returning Seattle to a system of partial public financing of elections. Seattle had public financing from 1979 to 1991 before a change in state law made it illegal from 1992 to 2008.

The Council will review several issues relating to how a system of public financing could be structured, including qualifying, spending limits, contribution limits, match level, and how to fund it. The agenda for the meeting is here.

The Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission sent a letter recommending the Council consider a program for City Council races. Candidates would need to show a broad base of support by obtaining at least 600 contributions of $10 or more to qualify, agree to limit their spending to $210,000, and receive a 6-1 public match used in New York City.

I wrote an about public financing in Seattle earlier this year.

In January and February, the Council held forums with representatives from the Elections offices of Los Angeles and San Francisco, which have public financing, and academic experts, which included a review of New York City’s public financing program.

Materials from the first meeting of the Public Campaign Finance committee on April 29 meeting are here.

The City Council has a Public Financing issues page, with links to relevant documents, including video of the presentations the Council received. Future meetings are scheduled for May 28 and June 10, and June 17 if necessary. Approval in a November public vote would be necessary to adopt public financing.

The first on January 31 featured representatives from the LA and San Francisco Ethics Commissions, and the Portland League of Women Voters. They spoke about how public financing works in practice.

The second forum on February 13 featured Key Mayer of the University of Wisconsin, and David Early of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. They spoke about the big picture of public financing, research, and the legal environment created by recent Supreme Court decisions, including Citizens United. They also discussed New York City’s public financing program.

You can view the forums on the Seattle Channel website for January 31, and February 13.

The materials for both events are also available online. For January 31 you can view the presentations from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, and for February 13 from Mayer and Early.

The next step is to hear back from the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission in response to the letter from myself and Councilmembers Clark, O’Brien and Rasmussen. In December we asked them to recommend a public financing model that meets the goals of increasing electoral competitiveness, reducing financial barriers to entry for candidates, and increasing the role and emphasis of small donors in the electoral process, with an eye toward a possible 2013 ballot measure.

While I voted against the agreement for a SODO arena, when it was under discussion I focused on details in the agreement, seeking to avoid some of the most problematic provisions included in stadium and arena deals around the country.

In researching deals around the country, one such provision I found is a requirement to maintain a facility in first-class condition. Trends in arenas and stadiums change regularly, and it’s not always possible to know what direction they’ll go. An arena that’s first-class today might be far from it 10 years from now.

For example, a few weeks ago a VP from the NFL was quoted in an LA Times article saying that new NFL football stadiums could soon more like NBA arenas:

“What if a new stadium we built wasn’t 70,000, but it was 40,000 seats with 20,000 standing room? But the standing room was in a bar-type environment with three sides of screens, and one side where you see the field. Completely connected.”

I was reminded of the first-class provision by a recent report I saw about a stadium deal in St. Louis with the St. Louis Rams of the NFL, for a $280 million domed stadium that opened in 1995.

The St. Louis football stadium agreement calls for the facility to be maintained as a “first-tier” facility, at public expense. The agreement defines “first-tier” as being in the top 25% of NFL football stadiums, and allows the Rams to break their lease in 2015 if it is not maintained in “first-tier” condition.

The “first-tier” matter went to arbitration, with the Rams proposing a $700 million upgrade, and St. Louis offering a $120 million upgrade.

The arbitrators ruled in favor of the Rams, saying in their ruling that the St Louis proposal did not meet first-tier status because it would be too small, had inadequate views from suites, insufficient leg room in premium seats, and lacked “openness, light and air”. They noted that 17 of 22 stadiums built since 1995 have been open air; 4 of the other 5 have retractable roofs, and the other one “admits light copiously through expansive windows” in the stadium.

So one reason the stadium doesn’t meet “first-tier” standards is because of how stadiums have been built since then—something no one could have foreseen.

While the St. Louis situation could eventually be resolved in any number of ways, it shows the danger of a first-tier provision–if funding responsibility falls on the public side.

I wanted to be sure we avoided a similar provision in any Seattle SODO arena deal that could come back to bite us, and spoke with city lawyers and staff about this.

And the SODO arena agreement is different: it requires Hansen to make improvements to maintain the facility as a “first-class arena.” So the SODO arena agreement requires the private party to maintain the facility in first-class condition—not the public.

While this is just one detail among many in the MOU, it’s an important one.

A few weeks ago I blogged about exploring public financing for Seattle elections. The next step is two public forums on January 31 and February 13.

On January 31, we’ll hear representatives from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland to talk about how public financing works in practice. On February 13, we’ll hear from leading experts about the impacts of public financing.

Please join us; public questions are encouraged. Details are listed below, or click on the flyer.

Part 1: Public Financing in Practice

January 31, 6-8 p.m.

Seattle University, 901 12th Avenue

LeRoux Conference Center

Panel presentation with audience questions and answers featuring Heather Holt and David Tristan, Los Angeles City Ethics Commission; John St. Croix, Executive Director, San Francisco Ethics Commission; and Debbie Aiona, League of Women Voters of Portland

Part 2: Public Election Financing in Research

Wednesday, Feb. 13, 6 – 8 p.m.

Seattle Central Library Auditorium, 1000 Fourth Avenue

I appear in a lively discussion on the January edition of the Seattle Channel’s City Inside/Out: Council edition, along with Council President Clark and Councilmember Godden.

We discuss issues such as the future of Key Arena, South Lake Union, floating homes, gun laws, and public financing of Seattle elections. The discussion is hosted by the Seattle Channel’s Brian Callanan.

Click on either of the pictures to view the conversation.

Rather than selecting poets myself, I recruit a notable local literary artist or two to curate a number of poets who will read at the start of my committee meetings during the course of the year. To date, the program has presented approximately 194 poets reading 216 poems.

This year, I’m pleased to announce two remarkable Words’ Worth curators for 2013.

Jourdan Keith

For the first half of the year, Jourdan Keith will curate. The second half will be curated by Judith Roche.

Jourdan is a Seattle Poet Populist Emerita and the Seattle Public Library’s first Naturalist-in-Residence. She is a storyteller, naturalist and educator. A student of Sonia Sanchez, her work blends the textures of political, personal and natural landscapes to offer voices from the margins of American lives.

Judith is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Wisdom of the Body, an American Book Award winner.

Judith Roche

She has published widely in various journals and magazines, has poems installed on several Seattle area public art projects and has taught at various universities and teaches poetry workshops throughout the country.

I encourage you to visit the Words’ Worth website where you can read every poem read so far as well as watch a video of many of them.

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I believe that Seattle residents should have the opportunity to vote on whether our local elections should receive public financing.

Councilmembers are beginning efforts to explore a public financing system for Seattle. If this effort moves forward, the Council will place this decision on either the primary or general election ballot in 2013.

BACKGROUND, 1979-2009

Seattle had partial public financing of election campaigns in 1979 and 1981, and from 1987-1991. In 1992, state Initiative 134 passed, prohibiting public financing. In 2008 the State legislature passed a law allowing local jurisdictions to establish programs to publicly finance campaigns, if approved by a public vote, and the funding is derived from local sources only.

The City Council responded by passing Resolution 31061, which set up a Campaign Public Financing Advisory Committee that recommended publicly financing Seattle election campaigns; they recommended that the City Council place a measure on the November 2009 ballot for a public financing program, to go into effect for the 2011 election, with an estimated annual cost between $2.3 and $3.2 million. However the Great Recession began and City revenues plummeted, so the Council held off the vote indefinitely.

2013 UPDATE

With the local and national economies improving and added attention being drawn to the need for election reform highlighted by the Citizens United decision, citizens have requested the Council to revisit this issue. Other major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami already have public financing of municipal elections.

Last October I talked with Council President Clark and suggested that it may be time to revisit this issue, particularly since she had been a lead supporter in the past. We then kicked off a discussion of the public financing of elections in Seattle with a statement in support of exploring public financing of election campaigns in Seattle.

In December, we were joined by Councilmembers O’Brien and Rasmussen in sending a letter to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission asking them to recommend a public financing model that meets the goals of increasing electoral competitiveness, reducing financial barriers to entry for candidates, and increasing the role and emphasis of small donors in the electoral process. Recommendations were requested by March 1, for consideration of a potential ballot measure in either the primary or general election in the fall of 2013.

As part of the request, we asked that they review the 2008 report of the Campaign Finance Advisory Committee; examine new case law and changes to existing programs in other cities since 2008; explore new research on the effectiveness of public financing in meeting the goals; review local election data since 2008, and also consider potential budget implications.

SEATTLE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS, 2001-2011

The case for or against public spending on helping finance local elections comes down to weighing its cost versus its benefit. While the cost is easier to measure than the benefit, there is an underlying sense that legislative bodies like a local council can most wisely spend the public’s money when they take into account the broadest range of concerns, rather than relying on a small cluster of interests.

There clearly has been a trend in Seattle of the growing concentration of more campaign money being collected from fewer donors. The 2011 Seattle Ethics and Elections report notes that from 2001 to 2011, the average donation in City Council races rose from $115 to $223. During the same period, the percentage of contributions under $100 decreased from 63% to 32% of total contributions.

THE BIG PICTURE

Democracies are based on a one-person one-vote principle; each person has the same influence in deciding who represents our public’s needs. But candidates, while attentive to soliciting individual voters, spend a good deal of their time soliciting donations. It is more time-efficient to collect one $700 donation (Seattle’s contribution limit per person) than say thirty-five $20 dollar donations. That means a candidate is spending an inordinate amount of time talking to a small constellation of voters, defined primarily by their ability or willingness to make large contributions.

The effect of that trend is difficult to measure, but it calls into question who elected officials are taking into consideration once they get into office. Who are they more likely to be talking to about issues and asking for donations? Generally less than 2% of those voting in any Council race make a contribution of any size; there is already a built in bias. It is only magnified when you consider that a clear majority of individual donations are collected in any local race from less than 20% of those making contributions. In the 2009 City Council elections, for example, only 8% of contributions were for $600 or more, but this totaled 52% of all money raised by candidates.

In pursuit of electing a City Council government that better reflects the priorities of a one-person one-vote democracy, some public funding of campaigns would increase the role and emphasis of small donors in the electoral process and by extension also broaden the public’s influence on the Council’s decision making. The public should have an opportunity to make that decision on this fall’s ballot.

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Thanks to Seattle voters who passed the Libraries for All levy last August, all Seattle neighborhood branch libraries will now be open on Sundays from 1-5 p.m.

Having libraries open on Sunday was the highest priority in the 33,000 public comments received during levy planning.

15 neighborhood libraries will be adding Sunday hours: Columbia, High Point, Madrona-Sally Goldmark, NewHolly, Fremont, South Park, Queen Anne, International District/Chinatown, University, Wallingford, Green Lake, Magnolia, Montlake, Northgate, and Delridge.

Celebrations will take place on Sundays from January through May at each of the libraries with new Sunday hours, beginning with the Columbia Branch on Sunday, January 6.

In addition, library users may now place up to 50 holds, up from 25 before. The Library also has new library cards designs with local icons, as shown here and in the image above.

The Library has a brief online survey through February 1 asking how you would like to use the library on Sundays, available here.

The resolution calls for a balanced approach that allows the tax cut for the wealthiest 2 percent to expire at the end of 2012, upholds federal commitments, and prioritizes revitalization of the economy and job creation.

Licata said, “Automatic across-the-board cuts would directly affect the quality of life of Seattle residents, and shift costs onto states and cities. Today, we join Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and others in opposing automatic cuts, and calling for the federal government to move toward shared prosperity, and uphold commitments to Social Security and other programs that underpin the health of our communities.”

The resolution, notes the sequestration of federally-funded programs would impact funding for critical housing, public safety, homeland security, environmental, education, public health, and transportation programs that directly affect the quality of life for all residents of Seattle.

The resolution notes that more than 22,000 homeless people and 132,000 very-low income families would impact the goal of providing safe, healthy communities.

The first round of automatic cuts, scheduled to arrive on January 2, would total $110 billion.

Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Cambridge, Hallendale Beach and Yonkers have passed similar resolutions.