The City Council enacts this chapter to accomplish the following purposes:
A. To improve methods of financing campaigns in order to ensure the public's right-to-know, combat corruption and undue influence, and promote citizen participation in the political process.
B. To prevent parties with a specific financial interest in the city's decision from exerting undue influence over those decisions by means of large campaign contributions.
C. To allow candidates and officeholders to spend a lesser proportion of their time on fund raising and greater proportion of their time dealing with issues of importance to the city and its residents.
D. To improve the disclosure of contribution sources in reasonable and effective ways.
E. To restore public trust in governmental electoral institutions.
F. To ensure that independent expenditures were not used to evade contribution limits.
G. To prevent large contributors to independent expenditure committees from influencing candidates in the same way that candidates are influenced by large contributors who give to them directly.
H. To prevent the corruption or appearance of corruption of candidates who have been given large contributions by independent expenditure committees and thus who may be influenced by those large contributions.
I. To reduce the political quid pro quo by candidates who might be more inclined to provide favors and attention to those entities that, without this chapter, would have contributed large sums to the candidate's campaign through the independent expenditure intermediary. (Ord. 2008-06 § 1 (part), 2008)