City council won’t go searching for answers to questions associated with the campaign spending of council candidate James Van Damme.
After the conclusion of the Oct. 18 vote, Mayor Nolan Crouse admitted he’d heard lots of talk and speculation about whether Van Damme had exceeded the $10,000 spending limit for a self-funded campaign. Van Damme was the first to enter the race, declaring his intention to run a full year ahead of the vote and ran regular newspaper ads from the outset.
Crouse suggested council could look into the situation once campaign spending information went public but now he’s backing off on that stance.
“I polled council and council as a body does not want to deal with it,” he said.
“People just felt that perhaps it was just a little bit outside the mandate of council.”
Crouse feels it’s up to a private citizen to take action if there’s a concern.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that somebody will be reporting something to the province,” he said.
The province brought in campaign financing rules for municipal elections in early 2010. A candidate can accept a maximum of $5,000 from any single donor and can contribute a maximum of $10,000 of their own money to their campaign.
Candidates must provide receipts for all campaign contributions and expenditures and had until March 1 to file a disclosure statement with the city. But candidates who declare themselves as self-funded don’t have to report any financial information. The city doesn’t verify the information, just turns it over to the province, said chief legislative officer Chris Belke.
The legislation isn’t clear how a resident can lodge a complaint, he said.
“There’s not a specific process laid out in the legislation, so you pretty much have to initiate that action within the legal system,” he said.
Van Damme was the only self-funded candidate not to fill out a declaration confirming personal spending did not exceed $10,000.
Van Damme said he ran a self-funded campaign and followed all the required steps.
“In the candidate handbook it states that a self-funded campaign doesn’t have to file disclosure on expenses so I’m exercising that right,” he said.
He declined to divulge how much he spent.
“We’re just not going to provide those numbers at this time,” he said. “If we’re challenged on it we’ll follow any rules on the challenging.”
“Being that I wasn’t elected into office, I find it really not an issue,” he added.
Van Damme placed 10th among the 13 councillor candidates, garnering 4,834 votes.
