It’s a wonder every member of the city council isn’t sent packing by recall elections, since it appears all won their seats under a city ordinance that’s flat-out unconstitutional.
Does that mean past election results can be challenged?
That’s unclear, but the issue that brought the constitutional violation to light might be even more troublesome to the electorate.
It’s the fact that office holders can decide how much we the people can or cannot contribute to their election campaigns, which, as Mayor Don Gage pointed out at the council’s March 16 meeting, are getting so expensive they easily can exceed the $26,000 contribution limit, 50 cents per resident, allowed under current city law.
Those of us who shiver when elected officials hike their own salaries, stipends, benefits and perks should break into a cold sweat when those same officials decide how much voters can give to their campaigns. Is that a conflict of interest?
But there they were March 16, talking about the issue to a practically empty house, which must give the impression sometimes that the people are not interested.
The people are very interested.
Yet, at no time during the council’s discussion did a member wonder what the public thinks about election contributions. Nor did any member suggest that maybe the Gilroy electorate, not the elected, should decide such issues.
Councilman Perry Woodward said that elected officials run for office know best, which sounded a lot like the old and wormy saws that father always knows best or the church or government is always right.
“I think this council knows better than anybody what that number (the amount needed to run a campaign) is…we can decide that,” Perry instructed.
Yes, the council can. But should it? Or should voters decide?
Should the latter idea be part of the new election ordinance to be drafted to correct the constitutional flaw? Or at least be considered, with public input?
A U.S. Supreme Court decision, decided less than a year ago, did some fine-tuning to what’s allowable and what’s not in election campaigns and Gilroy’s law failed the test, according to City Attorney Andy Faber.
That’s because it has a dual contribution limit based on whether or not a candidate accepts a voluntary ceiling on what his or her campaign accepts. It gets a bit complicated, but the bottom line is Gilroy’s out of line.
While it’s “virtually impossible,” under the court’s rulings to limit how much a candidate can spend, contribution laws are less stringent, according to Faber—but must be carefully worded so as to ensure First Amendment rights while at the same time discouraging corruption and undue influence.
Parts of Gilroy’s election ordinance don’t meet muster, Woodward, a lawyer, said during Faber’s report. It was Woodward who had raised the issue in the first place, leading to Faber’s analysis of the city’s election ordinance.
“That in fact is the case. What we have now,” Woodward said, “cannot be used going forward because it violates the U.S. Constitution.”
And so the city staff and attorney will survey other cities’ practices, analyze the results and report to the council so it can bring the city law up to Constitutional snuff.
How about asking we the people of Gilroy, too?
If we have by our own creation a government that is of the people by the people and for the people, it follows that the decisions about how we are to be governed and the laws attendant to that end are of our own making.
We also are as a nation a representative democracy; we elect from among our own those persons we wish to represent our interests. We give them the privilege and power to turn our wishes, those of the majority in theory, into the warp and woof of how we comport ourselves as a civil society ruled and protected by laws we approve of and by which we agree to live—most of us, anyway.
So the peoples’ decisions and interests ultimately govern, by which is meant that we are not governed by the decisions and interests of those elected to represent us.
We do and must insist that those we elect represent us and our best interests, not themselves and their self-interests.
And if the electorate’s money is to play a part in those elections, then we the people, mindful of the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings, should be consulted and heard on the matter.
