If the new budget isn’t amended, 2026 will be Oakland’s first election in over two decades that has no public financing for candidates.
by Eli Wolfe May 12, 2025 (Oaklandside.com)
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In 2022, Oakland voters approved Measure W, which created a program called Democracy Dollars that aimed to level the political playing field by giving all registered voters vouchers to support candidates in local elections. The idea was to dilute the power of wealthy individuals and organizations in terms of the money candidates need to successfully run for office.
But a financial crisis erupted in 2023 and city leaders decided to postpone the program indefinitely. Oakland fell back on a more modest program called Limited Public Financing, which reimburses candidates with city dollars for certain kinds of campaign expenses. This pot of money is pretty small, but candidates in every election have used it to pay for filing fees, print ads and campaign literature, and secure TV and radio spots.
Now, that program appears to be going away, too.
The city’s budget proposed earlier this week by Interim Mayor Kevin Jenkins slashes all remaining funding for the Limited Public Financing program. The budget doesn’t earmark any money for Democracy Dollars, which means the program won’t roll out until 2028 at the earliest.
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“Unless amendments are made to the budget, there will be no public financing in Oakland in 2026, despite Oaklanders voting overwhelmingly to strengthen public financing with the passage of Measure W,” Public Ethics Commission Executive Director Nicolas Heidorn told The Oaklandside in an email.
This would make the 2026 election the first one in over two decades to not have any form of public financing for candidates. That election will feature races for three city council seats and mayor. The OUSD District 2, 4, and 6 seats will also be on the ballot.
However, there are signs that the council may change course on this issue. Councilmembers Janani Ramachandran, Ken Houston, and Interim Mayor Jenkins have proposed an ordinance that would temporarily reauthorize the limited public financing program through 2028.
The ordinance would also amend the Oakland Campaign Reform Act to temporarily increase campaign contribution limits from $650 to $900 for individuals, and from $1,300 to $1,800 for broad-based political committees.
Their proposal would increase how much money can go into an elected official’s officeholder account, which are basically bank accounts held by elected officials. For councilmembers, the annual contribution limit would increase from $25,000 to $75,000. For the at-large seat it would increase from $30,000 to $100,000; for mayor, from $50,000 to $100,000.
Ramachandran and Jenkins are both up for re-election next year. Their ordinance will be heard by the council’s scheduling committee on May 22.
The ethics commission’s enforcement caseload is “untenable”
The mayor’s proposed budget adds one investigator to the ethics commission but the commission’s new enforcement chief, Tovah Ackerman, said this simply isn’t adequate.
“The current ratio that the Oakland Enforcement Unit faces is untenable,” Ackerman said in a report to the commission. “No amount of dedication or hard work will allow two staff members — the Enforcement Chief and the single investigator — to address the overwhelming caseload.”
Ethics cases involve allegations that city officials or employees violated rules around conflicts of interest, abuses of authority, bribery, violations of campaign rules, and other wrongdoing.
Oakland currently has two enforcement staff to handle 152 open complaints, equating to a ratio of about 76 complaints per person. That ratio is significantly higher than other California cities with ethics commissions: In San Francisco and Los Angeles, the ratio is nine complaints per person; in San Diego it’s 14 per staffer.
Even if the city gave the PEC enough funding to hire three additional investigators, the ratio would be 30 complaints per person, which Ackerman noted is still over double the ratio in other cities.
Ackerman said that without additional staffing and resources, the PEC anticipates needing to close over half of the complaints that were filed prior to June 2024 to help close the backlog.
The enforcement chief is also proposing several steps to maximize the limited resources in her office:
- The PEC will refer all incoming Political Reform Act complaints to the California Fair Political Practices Commission for the foreseeable future
- Ackerman will initiate fewer investigations into lower-level complaints, save for cases where enforcement is important for deterrence
- The PEC will close all “relatively minor to moderate cases” that involve people who are no longer city employees. Ackerman said staff will likely maintain cases if the allegations involve high-level officials
Will Oaklanders approve an Anti-Corruption Act?
The ethics commission is also preparing to come back to the City Council with a proposal to independently fund the PEC with a parcel tax.
The proposed measure would create the “Oakland Anti-Corruption Act,” which would use parcel tax revenues to fully fund the ethics commission. The commission is currently covered by money from Oakland’s general purpose fund.
The commission says this proposal would help set up a more robust enforcement unit for cracking down on law breakers and allow the PEC to fully fund the Democracy Dollars program. Last year, the PEC tried to introduce a similar measure to go on the ballot for the April special election. That effort was quashed by councilmembers who feared it would interfere with the success of the sales tax measure.
The new measure would also prohibit lobbyists from providing gifts of any kind to elected officials or their staff, contributing money to candidates, or bundling campaign contributions to people running for office.
Correction: Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission is planning to forward Political Reform Act complaints to the state FPPC, not Public Records Act complaints.
ELI WOLFE
Eli Wolfe reports on City Hall for The Oaklandside. He was previously a senior reporter for San José Spotlight, where he had a beat covering Santa Clara County’s government and transportation. He also worked as an investigative reporter for the Pasadena-based newsroom FairWarning, where he covered labor, consumer protection and transportation issues. He started his journalism career as a freelancer based out of Berkeley. Eli’s stories have appeared in The Atlantic, NBCNews.com, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. Eli graduated from UC Santa Cruz and grew up in San Francisco.More by Eli Wolfe
