Kudos to Kent Kirkpatrick - GM of the Corporate Services Department - and his staff who this week delivered a sensible and reasoned report on election contribution rebates to the corporate services committee of city council.

Back on April 2nd councillor Peter Hume asked staff to look into the feasibility of setting up an election contribution rebate program - similar tax financed schemes operating at the federal and provincial levels - for donations made during municipal elections. The impetus for this request came from a growing and partly justifiable perception that developers were funding an inordinate amount of councillors' election costs through donations. The conclusion drawn was that through this financing, the development community was and is exerting an undue influence on development decisions, official plan interpretations, zoning variances, and almost anything else council debates and decides.

While it is true that many - not all, but many - councillors receive a large chunk of their funding from the development industry, the perception that developers are running roughshod over municipal government and contributing to Toronto-esque runaway urban sprawl and environmental degradation is about as credible as folks who believe Elvis is the opening act for the Yes concert in the Corel Centre WordPerfect Theatre this coming Sunday.

In fact, when it comes to development decisions, it's quite the opposite.

The continuing push towards a smart growth governed city has basically resulted in council pursuing an "iron curtain" anti-development agenda around the existing city. And while smart growth - brownfields reclamation, greenroof promotion and residential intensification … all buttressed by massive transit investments - looks good on paper, in reality it is much more difficult and complex.

For example, if present restrictions on development are maintained, pursuit of smart growth concepts will result in our projected population growth of 400,000 being jammed into 200,000 units in the inner and outer cores of the city. Given that there aren't many more spaces to build houses, this translates into 2000 10-storey apartment buildings at 10 units per floor.

And we know these won't be allowed in rural wards so do the math … that's 125 apartment building per 16 city wards. Do you think folks in the Glebe, Golden Triangle, Westboro, Chapel Hill, Alta Vista or pick your community are ready for a few new apartment buildings in their own backyards? But this is a story - or is that storey - for another column.

Back to the main point, the alarmists always point to corporate and business money influencing local politics. So some suggest - albeit wrongly - that a municipal rebate system is the way to go pointing to federal and provincial politics as the beacon to be followed. Proponents of such an approach are woefully mistaken in this when it comes to efficacy and moral concerns.

This same argument is used at the higher levels of government as a means (by rebating individual contributions to candidates through the tax system) to encourage individual candidates and lessen the grip of political parties on this system. But in fact the opposite has transpired. Independent candidates hardly every succeed and more often than not, do not even recoup their campaign deposits.

From a moral point of view, we need to look back to the words of one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, who stated, "to compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." This is exactly what election contribution tax rebates do; they pervert the tax and political system.

The laudable goal of Peter Hume and others is to make the election finance regime more transparent. Dipping into city coffers to give tax rebates - which come out of scarce operating budget dollars to begin with - to someone who contributes $25.00 or $750.00 to a local candidate is misguided. Better for political office wannabes to be up front and release lists of their contributors, freely and by choice, to voters before election day and then we can all judge whether we believe they may be beholden to a specific interest group or lobby … be it the development industry, anti-poverty advocates or a local neighbourhood association.

The staff report says it all: "It should be noted however, that there is no conclusive evidence that such a program (meaning tax rebates for contributions - WJR) actually serves to increase the number of contributors, or the number of small contributions made by individual contributors." And to that yours truly says, case closed.