[ OUR OPINION ]

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Candidates have right
to spend their money

THE ISSUE Mayoral candidate Mufi Hannemann has called for limits that candidates can spend on their own campaigns.

MUFI Hannemann understandably is intimidated by the ability of Duke Bainum to use his family's wealth to finance much of his campaign in the mayoral election. Hannemann has called for limits on the amount of money candidates can lend to their campaigns, but such a restriction probably would violate the candidates' First Amendment rights of free speech.

Bainum is outspending Hannemann, who said during a forum sponsored by the Star-Bulletin and PBS Hawaii that reforms are needed to prevent the rich from buying elections. He cited the 2001 New York City mayoral election won by billionaire Republican Michael Bloomberg, who spent $73 million from his personal fortune -- about $100 a vote -- to defeat publicly financed Democrat Mark Green.

Hannemann called for the reforms because "only the wealthy are going to be able to run. These are very costly and expensive campaigns."

The government can and does control contributions made to candidates or political parties, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 interpreted the First Amendment as protecting, as a legal extension of free speech, a wealthy person's ability to spend an unlimited amount of personal wealth through his or her political campaign.

The high court did rule that the government may "condition acceptance of public funds on an agreement by the candidate to abide by specified expenditure limitations." The federal government, 14 states and 12 local jurisdictions provide some form of public financing, but is has not been effective. The Bloomberg-Green race is an example of how public financing fails to even the money contest; Green received about $4.5 million in public funds and spent a total of $16.2 million, a relatively meager amount.

The unrestricted campaign spending by wealthy candidates enables them to challenge incumbents who might otherwise be unbeatable because of free publicity, name recognition, franking privileges and "constituent services," a permanent campaign effort. As Bainum points out, it also can erase any appearance of being obligated to special interests or to corporations seeking government contracts.

Bainum, who has reported nearly $2 million in loans compared to Hannemann's $90,000 loan, says he is financing most of his own campaign because he doesn't want to be obligated to contributors. "I want to be beholden to the people," he says.

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Devil is in the details
of sewer bond plan

THE ISSUE The city administration is asking the Council to approve issuing as much as $175 million in sewer revenue bonds.

BEFORE the City Council approves a proposal to issue $175 million in sewer revenue bonds, the Harris administration must make clear what projects and the amount in debts the bonds will fund.

The Council's request for the information is reasonable. Taxpayers, whom Council members represent, also need to know how much more they will be paying in sewer fees, which clearly will be necessary to back the additional debt the bonds will incur.

The proposal the Harris administration put before the Council is void of specifics. It does not explain what construction projects will be funded and how much of the current debt will be covered by issuing the bonds.

In addition, the administration is vague on how much of a sewer fee increase will be required. A figure of about 23 percent could only be extrapolated from revenue projections that the administration said would go up from $113 million in the current fiscal year to $139.2 million in the next.

The last time sewer fees were raised was in 1993. Fees were scheduled to go up by about 3 percent annually from 2000 through 2003, but the administration and the Council did not put them in place, possibly because of political considerations.

The deferrals, however, have apparently left the city with an unstated amount of debt and a looming need to upgrade the city's sewage system that has been under the scrutiny of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A 23 percent raise in fees would amount to roughly $5 more per month for a typical single-family home. While the increase isn't huge, it will affect taxpayer pocketbooks. As Council Budget Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi said, smaller increments over the years would have been easier for people to handle.

The administration seems to think that its process of getting the Council's blind approval to issue bonds, then figuring fee increases to pay for debt and operating costs -- including pay raises for city employees -- is the way to go. But Council members are right to ask for details first. They should press the administration for the particulars.