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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Mayoral candidate Paul Falvo released his campaign expenses last week and while other mayoral and council candidates support his example, some say making donor names public shouldn't be required.

Falvo reported on his blog that campaign expenses amounted to $15,535.61, $3,480 of which came from 19 unnamed donors.

A municipal elections bylaw was passed in August but the bylaw does not require candidates to release the names of their donors. The city only had the ability to create an elections bylaw this year after amendments were made to the territorial government's Local Authority Elections Act in 2011. Provisions in that act now allow council to make stipulations on such things as electronic vote counting, mail-in ballots and reporting requirements for campaign contributions.

The new bylaw - just three pages long - mainly deals with housekeeping matters, such as reporting election dates and locations. Council gave direction to administration to do "further research" on issues around disclosure, however, the city is not saying when that might come back.

"Prompted by questions from council, including myself, on the enforceability of various aspects of that bylaw as it relates to campaign donations, the city clerk's office did a little more research and found it was more complicated than what we originally envisioned," explained mayor-elect Mark Heyck. "I would imagine (the new) council will want to pick up on it and that the city clerk will come back with more recommendations to put teeth into the bylaw on campaign disclosure."

Defeated city councillor Amanda Mallon said she would have liked to have seen the rules laid out sooner.

"I am looking forward to (council) tightening our election bylaw so that the next time the city council faces a municipal election there will be a few things in terms of rules," said Mallon last week.

"Right now, I think it is a little bit open. It was way too late to have brought it up and it should have been dealt with in January. Bringing it up was like saying, 'Look what we could do, but it is too late.'"

Heyck said he intends to release his own figures "very early in the term," including the names of his donors and thinks the municipal elections bylaw should be as stringent as the Canada Elections Act by next election in terms of naming donors.

"I have pledged to release my list of donors," he said.

Coun. Cory Vanthuyne, entering his second term, said his final expenditures for the campaign came to about $9,600. Only about a third of that money came from contributors while the rest came from his own pocket. Most money, he said, covered items such as signs, his campaign website, newspaper advertisements and mail-out brochures. He remains open to having the names of donors made public if it is legislated but not in the case of this election because it is not part of the agreement with those donors.

"I'm still not going to disclose any of those individuals or businesses that donated to my campaign," he said. "That is something that if through legislation it was a requirement, you would have let those soliciting donations know that their names could become public. Or that they would be getting a tax receipt. Right now that is not the understanding between myself and my donors."

Mayoral runner-up Tim Doyle said he spent around $14,000 on his campaign, with about a third of that coming from donations. But as far as naming donors, he said he shouldn't be expected to do that.

"I had people that contributed to the campaign and who helped out and I didn't win," he said. "I am not going to put them in a difficult position where they might experience prejudice or negative effects for the fact that they weren't on the winning team."

He said if people want to have full disclosure in the law, then people should push for changes with the new council and not wait until right before the election.

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