"When the contractor ban was put in place back when, my first thought was, why would we single out contractors when there are other entities that do business with the government — including developers?" she said. "Why do we limit contractors? And what is a contractor? My eyebrows were raised in terms of the fairness of it."

She questioned Evans' reasoning for raising the issue.

"It's his job to shoot holes in the policies of Democrats, and he's doing his job, frankly," she said. "But I completely disagree with his assessment and even his motives in terms of whether or not he really has a belief that this is bad policy."

Wilson said she and her citizens advisory committee opted to remove the contractor ban out of fairness and to thwart the potential influence-peddling of campaign donors by lowering the donation limit to a level small enough that it would be unlikely to buy much influence in the first place.

But Evans said the lowered contribution limit would do little, if anything, to weed out corruption.

"It doesn't matter if the limit is lower because it's almost like putting alcohol in front of an alcoholic," Evans said. "It doesn't matter if it's a little bit or a lot, the temptation shouldn't be there."

Dayton's $5,000 limit was the first limit ever placed on campaign donations to county candidates.

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E-mail: estewart@desnews.com; dsmeath@desnews.com