California Common Cause has released a first-of-its-kind index and report on campaign finance laws in all California cities. The report, Local Dollars and Local Democracy, is an analysis of all campaign finance reforms in California cities, as of December 2022.

Key statewide findings include:

• 97% of all California cities now have contribution limits, thanks to AB 571 (Mullin – 2019), compared to just 22% of California cities in 2016.
• 482 California cities (and other local jurisdictions) now have pay-to-play prohibitions that require governing-body members who accept large campaign contributions from interested parties to recuse themselves, compared to just 35 cities before the passage of SB 1439 (Glazer – 2022).

But the report’s main emphasis is on identifying those cities that go beyond these state-wide norms, and it is set up so that local jurisdictions can the Municipal Campaign Finance Index (MCFI) to see what types of reforms other cities have implemented and determine which are desirable for their jurisdictions.

The report and interactive spreadsheets of the index can be downloaded HERE. The findings in the report are a product of the data collected in the California Municipal Campaign Finance Index (MCFI), which is an organized accounting of campaign finance laws codified in the charters and/or municipal codes of all California cities.