Campaign reform is called tepid

Last summer, Salt Lake County Councilman Joe Hatch made what he calls a "Faustian bargain."

At that time, two staffers in County Mayor Nancy Workman's office found themselves under the threat of criminal prosecution for inadvertently not filing a political committee financial disclosure statement. Hatch agreed to change the ordinance to sidestep criminal penalties against the staffers in exchange for the promise of a new, tougher ordinance.

Now, months later, Hatch has his new campaign finance disclosure ordinance — the Salt Lake County Council preliminarily approved it Tuesday — but in his mind it's not a better one.

"What am I getting out of this?" he said. "Nothing. We got a rewrite that we could have done anytime."

Hatch bemoaned the fact that the new ordinance does not include campaign contribution limits or require donors to list occupation and employer (to keep companies from hiding donations through employees).

Councilman Russell Skousen, who proposed the new ordinance, thinks it's a good one.

"How much do we want to beat this?" he said of the much-discussed issue. "Do we want to take care of this and move on?"

The old ordinance imposed criminal penalties on candidates and political action committees that did not file disclosure statements on time. Skousen's proposed ordinance required the county clerk to give people who fail to file (or who file inadequate disclosures) notice and time to correct the problem before criminal penalties apply.

"We want disclosure," he said. "We don't want to create a trap for the unwary."

Even that got softened, however, since the council Tuesday decided to replace criminal with civil penalties. Council Democrats in general have been agitating for a new ordinance, but Democrat Randy Horiuchi was most vocal in support of removing criminal penalties.

The new ordinance requires five campaign disclosures a year for candidates running for office, and one for existing office-holders who are not running.

Technically, the ordinance still mandates that candidates who do not file on time must be removed from the ballot.

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