Oklahoma City's attorney looks into election spending disclosure

“Right now, the council has no regulatory authority (over local elections),” city attorney Kenneth Jordan said.

Last year's elections in Oklahoma City featured unprecedented spending, much of it by anonymous donors. Councilmen Pete White and Ed Shadid have expressed worry the anonymity fosters irresponsible spending and scares off potential candidates for local office. They've been publicly supported by some of their colleagues in exploring ways to force donors to political action committees (PACs) that spend to influence local elections to identify themselves.

But state's current law regarding election spending, the Political Subdivisions Ethics Act, doesn't afford local governments that power and was formulated decades before PACs surfaced as major political finance machines.

The state Ethics Commission described parts of the act as “clearly violating the (U.S.) Constitution” and “unworkable” in a letter to the Legislature recommending heavy reform, citing the spending on Oklahoma City's elections as evidence the system is out of control.

Jordan's task is to see what ways the city could enforce the rules it might create, and finding an answer that accomplishes the goals of White and Shadid while remaining ethically and legally sound is proving elusive so far.