CATCH - Modest changes to election donation rules announced yesterday by the provincial government appear to have little effect on Hamilton politicians and their financial backers. Other proposed changes to municipal elections legislation leave enforcement in citizen hands but may make their task a bit easier.

A government release says the changes proposed in Bill 212 will “enhance the Municipal Elections Act by clarifying campaign finance rules, and strengthening compliance and enforcement measures” and that “the majority of the nearly 600 items [in the Bill] propose technical changes that would simplify government processes, update language and clarify administrative processes.”

The changes don’t include a long-sought ban on corporate and union donations to municipal candidates, nor do they extend the right to enact such a ban Hamilton and other cities beyond Toronto. Hamilton council formally requested that right in August.

The new rules limit total gifts by each donor in a single municipality to $5000. In Hamilton’s 2006 election campaign, that would have affected just four contributors – three corporations and one union – and would have still allowed one developer to legally help finance the campaigns of a ten candidates.

The most affected donor would have been LIUNA (the Labourers International Union of North America) which spent $9000 in 2006 to provide the maximum $750 to each of 12 candidates. Three corporations also exceeded the new $5000 limit in that election, two of them by only a small amount.

(PEIL) Planning and Engineering Initiatives Limited spent $5350, but also funded 12 candidates, while Spallacci Construction disbursed $6000 to 10 candidates, and Trinity Development handed out $5250 to seven candidates.

The new limits would have had no effect on the $4900 in donations given by Homes by DeSantis to 10 different candidates, eight of whom now sit on Hamilton’s 16-member council. All but one of those gifts was $500.

That type of outcome doesn’t correspond with what Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson says he’s trying to achieve with the new changes.

"It forces those companies or individuals to think long and hard about who[m] they want to give the money, as opposed to spreading it out to anyone and everyone," Watson told the Toronto Star. "We don't want to even have the perception that one company can, in essence, go off and purchase favour with the whole council."

Other changes to election rules will prevent candidates from carrying over surplus donations to future elections (beyond next year), and will close the loophole that exempted spending on victory parties from expense limits.

In the 2006 election reporting, only two Hamilton councillors recorded surpluses exceeding a few hundred dollars. Chad Collins had $2,773 left and Tom Jackson is carrying over $3,697. After the next election surpluses like those will have to be given to the city.

Jackson raised $19,500 more than he was allowed to spend in 2006, and spent $13,394 of that on a party and appreciation notices for his supporters. Any future parties he and other candidates will have to pay for without exceeding their legislated spending limits.

Municipalities will now be required to set up independent committees to receive and consider complaints about violations of the act – something that Hamilton council did for the last election after being slammed by a provincial judge for refusing the 2004 audit requests made by Joanna Chapman respecting former mayor Larry DiIanni and several other councillors and candidates.

The changes also require that election finance statements including lists of donors be made available on-line. Some municipalities are already following this practice, but to this point Hamilton residents have had to seek and pay for photocopies from the city clerk.

NDP critique Michael Prue told the legislature yesterday that the $5000 limit is too high and “means that the undue influence is going to continue to be there.” He also said he’d found nothing in the legislation that prevents owners of multiple companies from having each donate the maximum amount.

The current elections legislation says related corporations are treated as one donor, but companies are not required to reveal the names of their shareholders or the percentage that each holds, making enforcement of this rule extremely difficult – especially when that task is still left to citizens.