Portland plans public financing for city campaigns

Opponents of public financing schemes say those programs unfairly require taxpayers to fund campaigns with which they don’t agree.

“There is no such thing as public financing, there is only taxpayer financing,” said Dan Backer, a Republican campaign finance lawyer based in Virginia who opposes such measures. “Only a truly voluntary system of supporting speech you want to support, like campaign contributions, or even all speech through a voluntary system of adding money to your tax bill is ‘public financing.’”

Portland experimented with public financing a decade ago, when campaigns that qualified were given a lump sum of $350,000 for commission races and $450,000 for mayoral races. Voters nixed that program by a narrow margin in 2010.

Read more at The Hill.