Poway Council poised to adjust local election rules

By Steve Dreyer

The Poway City Council on Tuesday night will be asked to adopt an ordinance changing certain sections of local election laws.

The proposed changes reflect suggestions made by the council during a workshop session held on Nov. 15.

While the $100 maximum on individual municipal election campaign contributions will not change, candidates will need to report contributions of $25 or more, rather than the old threshold of $10 or more. Candidates will also be able to accept up to $100 contributions from political parties. A recent court ruling said parties can donate to non-partisan elections.

Other changes included in the proposed new ordinance:

• The $50 fee charged to candidates interested in having a statement included in the voter information pamphlet will be raised to whatever the county determines to be the candidate’s fair share of overall printing costs. In past regular elections, that amount had been between $400 and $500, the cost of translating the statements into many languages (four in Poway’s case.) The first $50 of the fee will be paid by the city.

• The city will require a $200 fee of anyone filing a notice of intent to circulate a petition in the city. The fee will be refunded if enough qualified signatures are collected within a 12-month period.

• Criminal penalties will be reduced from a maximum fee of $10,000 (or three times the illegal contribution or expenditure reported, whichever is greater) to a maximum fine of $1,000.

• Civil penalties will be reduced from a maximum of $5,000 to $1,000.

A current city requirement that a campaign financing statement be filed on the Friday immediately preceding the election date will be dropped. State election law does not require this.

The city’s first set of campaign laws were adopted in 1981. Revisions have been made in 1987, 1991 and 1997.

Tuesday’s meeting will begin at 7 p.m. in the council chambers, 13325 Civic Center Drive.

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Posted by Steve Dreyer on Feb 3 2012. Filed under Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry