Businesses fight election reform

Thanks for your thoughtful editorial on Voter Owned Elections. You state that “public funded election campaigns are a good idea getting a cool reception locally” and you don’t get it.

I don’t get it either. It seems like the best response to the scramble for dollars that every candidate must go through in order to be elected. It would allow candidates to run campaigns free from big money interests and focused on the real issues.

The citizens of Albuquerque, N.M. get it. They just passed a ballot measure supporting public funding for candidates by a wide margin. Who is speaking when it is reported that Portlanders don’t like this ordinance? Do the voices of Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, who wholeheartedly support Voter Owned Elections in order to clean up the scandalous waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars on local campaigns, speak for no one?

Or is it more likely that that business concerns of our community are desperately grasping at this petition to make sure their interests are met? I can’t imagine that they are motivated by 1/10^th of 1 percent budget item.

Rita Fawcett
NW 13^th Ave.