Plans for a campaign disclosure bylaw in Sturgeon County were shelved yesterday, replaced instead with a provincial law.
County councillors voted unanimously to rescind a previous motion brought forward after the 2007 campaign for Sturgeon to draft a campaign expense disclosure bylaw.
Any bylaw the county might draft at this point would have been a moot point because of a new provincial law passed this spring requiring municipalities to follow the same set of rules.
Previously, some municipalities, including Edmonton and St. Albert, had campaign disclosure bylaws requiring candidates to reveal how much they had spent and a list of donors.
Other municipalities, including Sturgeon, did not require candidates to make any kind of disclosure.
Coun. Ken McGilis proposed a Sturgeon disclosure bylaw after the last campaign. At yesterday’s council meeting, he said he wanted the bylaw to come forward because there had been a lot of money spent in 2007 and not knowing where it came from raised some people’s suspicions.
Being open about the disclosures would allay those concerns for residents, he said, but added he’s satisfied the provincial legislation would cover the same issues.
Under the new provincial law, candidates will have to disclose any donations exceeding $100 and will not be able to accept donations of more than $5,000. They will also be prohibited from spending more than $10,000 of their own funds on a campaign.
