Maine legislators this week will consider a bill that would require the Maine Ethics Commission to review campaign spending reports in Portland city elections. Lawmakers might also consider broadening the bill to include smaller municipalities as well.
The proposal, sponsored mostly by members of the Portland's legislative delegation, would require candidates for school board, city council and ballot campaigns to report fundraising and spending efforts to the Ethics Commission, which regulates campaign finance in races for the Legislature, governor, district attorney and county government.
The bill comes amid increased campaign spending in the state's largest city and a growing interest in efforts to track those who are attempting to influence Portland voters.
But the proposal has also prompted the Maine Town & City Clerks' Association to float the idea of expanding the commission's jurisdiction to include all 15 municipalities that are currently required to track spending on local elections.
"When we say the bill being proposed it intrigued us that if they (Ethics) were willing to consider taking on Portland's filings that maybe this could be a way to shift in increments and have them take over the filing requirements for other size municipalities," said Patti Dubois, who leads the group's policy committee.
Dubois said the clerks' association recognizes that the Ethics Commission might not have the staff to administer and oversee finance reports for all 15 municipalities, which could add an estimated 150 local candidate filings to the 500 or so the agency already handles.
She said that's why the association supports changing the bill to initially include just the state's three largest cities of Portland, Lewiston and Bangor.
"We're not the experts in campaign finance law and whenever questions arise we always have to defer to the Ethics Commission," Dubois said. "So we just felt that it was reasonable and logical to suggest that maybe they should just take it over."
Under current law candidates in municipalities with populations of 15,000 or more are required to file finance reports with their local clerks.
Only 15 towns statewide meet that threshold, while just three — Portland, Lewiston and Bangor — have populations of 30,000 or more.
While adding municipalities to the commission's scope of oversight could improve public disclosure of campaign finance activities, as well as enforcement matters, it could also present staffing challenges for a small agency that frequently gets called upon to adjudicate high-profile and sometimes complicated disputes.
Ethics Commission director Jonathan Wayne declined to discuss the bill on tape, but he's expected to testify before the State and Local Government Committee when it holds a public hearing Wednesday morning.
