When Norm Rice ran for mayor of Seattle in 1989, he got a boost from the taxpayers, collecting tens of thousands of dollars in public money for his campaign. So did other Seattle candidates from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, under a pioneering program that helped cover the electioneering costs of office-seekers who agreed to limit their overall spending.

That program, as well as a similar one adopted by King County in 1989, was eliminated in 1992 by Initiative 134, a statewide measure that focused mainly on setting caps on political contributions by individuals and companies.

Now state Rep. Joe McDermott, D-Seattle, wants to reopen the door to public financing of local campaigns. He's sponsoring a bill that would allow cities and counties to set up financing.

"Publicly funded campaigns work well," McDermott said, pointing to Arizona and other states where programs exist. "They take money out of politics, they take reliance on contributions and big money out."

McDermott's measure has been heard in a House committee but not voted on there yet. A companion bill by Sen. Rosa Franklin, D-Tacoma, has made the same progress in the Senate.

McDermott has sponsored similar bills in past sessions. He's optimistic this year because campaign financing is getting a lot of attention in the aftermath of the state Supreme Court elections last fall, when record amounts of money poured into the races, much of it from political action committees.

The same State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee hearing that addressed McDermott's bill also considered proposals to overhaul financing of high court campaigns, including one pushed by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Opposition to McDermott's bill came from the Washington Association of County Officials, which sent Executive Director Deborah Wilke to testify at the hearing.

"They felt, as local officials, that they're already strapped enough for resources and revenues," Wilke said after testifying. "They would rather put those forth to support services to the public rather than financing local government campaigns."

Committee member Mike Armstrong, D-Wenatchee, opposes all the bills.

"Once the taxpayers get wind that their tax dollars are going to pay for campaigns ... the citizens are going to come completely uncorked," Armstrong said. "Education, transportation, health care -- those are better uses of taxpayer dollars, not funding campaigns."

Rice entered the 1989 race for mayor fairly late, and he said public financing helped him overcome that disadvantage.

"It gives a more level playing field for those candidates who don't have access to large sums of money," he said. "I think it's fair. I think it's reasonable."

In accepting public financing in 1989, Rice agreed to limit his overall campaign spending to $250,000. City records are incomplete, but it's estimated Rice collected a third to a half of that total in public financing. The city spent $333,000 for all publicly financed campaigns in 1989, the highest total in any single year.

Rice defeated Doug Jewett, who raised $365,000 from private contributors only. For years in which records exist, a majority of candidates, like Jewett, did not sign up for public money.

The Seattle financing program, one of the few in the country at the time, matched the first $50 of each individual contribution to a campaign, provided a candidate draws a minimum number of contributions of $10 or more (300 for mayor, 200 for other city offices). The maximum contribution in 1989 was $350, whether a candidate accepted public financing or not.

Jan Drago, a member of the City Council since her election in 1993, first ran in 1991, collecting about a third of the $75,000 spending limit in public cash.

"It's a fairer way to finance campaigns," she said. It's a help to challengers, who don't have the same access to money as incumbents, she said.

The 200-contributors threshold prompted her to concentrate on mustering individual donors in 1991, using fundraising events that charged a moderate amount per head, Drago said. Supporters of public financing say that kind of outreach is one of the benefits.

"It's different," Drago said. "My last campaign (in 2005), I raised $250,000, but I spent an immense amount of time on the telephone, because it was easier to raise big dollars on the telephone than it was doing events."

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