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The Republic | azcentral.com

As a sort of late-night, dorm-room discussion topic, the question is interesting:

Should people who work for organizations funded with taxpayer dollars be allowed to run for public offices that decide who gets tax dollars?

Life is nothing if not rife with moral complications.

But, in real life, democratic societies that hold sacrosanct concepts such as free association and freedom of speech don't bar people from running for office because their employer is a non-profit that accepts government funding. Maybe they can get away with that sort of thing in fascist dictatorships. But not here.

A proposal that, incredibly, goes much further than that is now on a fast track to pass through the Peoria City Council.

Sponsored by Councilman Ben Toma (who — surprise! — is opposed this fall by a candidate who heads a city-funded non-profit), the measure also would ban leaders of city-funded non-profit groups from making campaign contributions or publicly endorsing city candidates.

It shouldn't take a constitutional expert to recognize such a ban constitutes a rather spectacular violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.

Americans generally are at odds over the limits of free speech. The U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision has spawned a furious debate over how (or whether) to control financially expressed political speech. Perhaps Toma's proposal can be seen as an extreme example of what happens when government attempts to set limits.

It should surprise no one that the main beneficiaries of Toma's proposal would be incumbents much like — well, how about that! — Toma. Incumbents instinctively try to limit the electoral prospects of the competition.

Some of those limitations can push the limits of what the Constitution allows. This preposterous Peoria proposal just pushes right through them.