A move to get big money out of local government garnered province-wide support during the Union of BC Municipalities convention this week. It took two passes at the case to gain that support.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps made a motion to bring the Wednesday motion back for review Thursday.
“When it was reviewed Oak Bay also made some slight adjustment to the motion to make it very clear we want a scheme developed in collaboration with province and UBCM,” said Oak Bay Mayor Nils Jensen. “That passed once we got it on the floor, it passed pretty handily.”
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The original motion and rewording were crafted by Coun. Kevin Murdoch, who brought the issue before Oak Bay this summer, prior to the provincial election. Noting all three parties in the legislature had some plan for campaign finance reform, he sought support for similar changes at the municipal level.
The second pass, with rewording that clarified it would mean a specific design for local government – not just a direct copy of provincial guidelines – gained UBCM support.
“That means there could be new financing and spending rules for the 2018,” Jensen said Thursday (Sept. 28). “Yesterday’s referral motion, if it had stood, would have meant the earliest we could have expected reform would have been 2022.
“We wanted to strike while the iron was hot.”
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