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Big donors no longer permitted in civic campaign

It’s posed a few challenges for the three big slates but it doesn’t appear the landscape is dramatically different from elections past.
money
Each election area and office has its own spending limit. In Delta, the maximum a mayoral candidate can spend is $62,223, while council hopefuls can’t spend more than $32,000.

It’s posed a few challenges for the three big slates but it doesn’t appear the landscape is dramatically different from elections past.

This year’s civic election has new spending and contribution limits, legislation passed by the provincial government with the aim of creating a more level playing field. Corporate and union donations are now a thing of the past, while individual contributions are limited to $1,200 per year.

Meanwhile, each election area and office has its own spending limit. In Delta, the maximum a mayoral candidate can spend is $62,223, while council hopefuls can’t spend more than $32,000.

Candidates not being able to accept $5,000 cheques from corporate backers will be different from previous elections, but it doesn’t look like the new rules will have a large impact on spending totals.

The Delta Independent Voters Association was the biggest spender in 2014 as the three-councillor slate expended almost $109,000, which would be marginally more than what three councilors could do this time around.

Saying they’re under the understanding that not even small businesses can contribute, Sylvia Bishop, who heads Team Delta, said it has been challenging concentrating on gathering smaller, individual donations. However, all their hard work has resulted in her slate being able to get up the maximum donations, a fundraising effort that began around the time she announced her candidacy earlier this year.

“What was different was we had to remind donors of the new contribution rules. If they are with a business or are a business, we’ve had to say no corporate donations and no union donations. We’ve had to touch upon that constantly just to make sure no mistakes are made,” Bishop said.

Former city manager George Harvie, who is running for mayor on the Achieving for Delta slate, told the Optimist things seem to be running smoothly but he is leaving the finances up to his campaign finance manager in order to concentrate on door knocking.

“We have our financial agent and manager who’s running the campaign. I said that we’ve got to be on the doorsteps and that’s what we’re doing, talking to people in their homes and doing everything insofar as requests to come out and speak. We have 11 members of our team, seven for council, including myself as mayor, and four school trustees…. we’re all networking and that usually results in contributions that goes directly to our financial agent,” Harvie said.

Anyone wanting bigger donations had until Oct. 31 of last year to get them before the tighter rules kicked in. Asked if they were able to garner more sizable contributions beforehand, Harvie reiterated the money side of things is being handled by the slate’s financial agent.

Incumbent council candidate Bruce McDonald, part of mayoral candidate Jim Cessford’s Independents Working for You ticket, said they’ve been able to get by on the smaller individual donations but it’s been tough not being able to collect slightly larger ones from any kind of business. It’s tough for people donating to a municipal campaign to write a bigger cheque because they don’t get a tax credit, he noted.

He added the new rules are challenging and one of those challenges is that school board and council candidates require separate accounts. When a donor wants to write a cheque, they must specify whether it’s for council or school board candidates.

“It appears to be more difficult to raise money for school board than it does council. And you also have to ask when it comes to advertising if it’s going to be 60-40 for council or 70-30, and you have to show the expenditures against each account. It’s driving our finance guy nuts,” McDonald said.