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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Waging political campaigns on the taxpayer dime | California Watch

Waging political campaigns on the taxpayer dime | California Watch

Waging political campaigns on the taxpayer dime

As we wrote yesterday, on Thursday the Fair Political Practices Commission will address petitions from several local government groups, which are arguing that commissioners did not have the authority to pass two 2008 regulations that keep them from spending tax money on political campaigns for bond issues.

But we thought you might appreciate seeing what a publicly financed bond campaign actually looks like.

Take a look at some of the ads we dug up from past municipal campaigns. Cities are allowed to send informational material, as long as it doesn't explicitly advocate for a position. But as with other political campaigns, the wordsmiths who craft these things walk a pretty fine line.