BREAKING THE MOLD

IT'S ABOUT time the state was elbowed out of the city's business.

So we applaud the Commonwealth Court's decision, by a 6-1 vote, to uphold the city's ability to regulate its own elections and impose campaign-contribution limits.

Those limits - $5,000 for individual donors and $20,000 for political committees - were a hard-earned victory for those wishing to change the city's legacy as a pay-to-play town. The victors include candidate Michael Nutter, who filed the original lawsuit to uphold Councilman Wilson Goode's original 2003 legislation that defined the limits.

Victors also include pretty much anyone who wants to believe we live in a democracy, where every vote, and not every check, counts.

Ironically, those opposed to the limits, including Chaka Fattah, also invoke democracy, by saying that millionaire Tom Knox shouldn't be allowed to buy City Hall.

But reform must not rest on situational ethics. Reform should promote rules that, as much as possible, stop or discourage widespread abuse of power that comes from being able to raise unlimited and unregulated amounts of cash.

That's what these limits do.

For sure, the limits change the complexion of this election. It puts the burden on candidates to raise lots of little packets of money, rather than a few very big ones. It diminishes the potential for one or two large contributors to have undue influence. That's good enough for us.

Fattah says he may challenge the Commonwealth Court ruling. Maybe he should instead consider challenging Knox's ability to lend, rather than donate, his money to his campaign, which means that if he wins, he can hold fundraisers to pay himself back the $5 million he's so far put in. Which means, as Daily News reporter Dave Davies recently pointed out, that while Knox says he's trying to buy City Hall back for the people, he should be more upfront about the terms of the mortgage. *