You can put your money on this: future elections in D.C. will look very different than the ones from the past. And it comes down to money.

This week the D.C. Council gave final approval to a bill that imposes new limits on who can give money to people running for elected office in the city. It follows a bill passed earlier this year that will create a program starting in 2020 to provide public financing to candidates. This follows the lead of Montgomery County, which just wrapped up its first election cycle with public financing in place.

Put together, the two bills represent a sweeping change to how political campaigns in D.C. will be funded, and could possibly open the door to new candidates and change the longstanding perception that well-heeled donors — individuals, business and lobbyists — hold sway over the levers of power in the city.

“They are going to create a sea change in elections and politics in D.C.,” said Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who helped write the bills and shepherded through the Council. “It’s going to increase trust among voters in city politics and city campaigns. I think it’s also going to allow candidates to feel that they have a fighting chance, that the playing field has been leveled.”

Public financing

The public financing program, which will take effect for the 2020 election, will offer candidates who swear off big-money contributions matching funds for every small contribution they take in. This means $50 from a D.C. resident would be matched with $250 in public funds. Advocates say the point is to democratize fundraising by allowing small donors to have more impact and also to allow candidates to spend less of their time chasing after contributions — especially from wealthy donors — to fuel their campaigns. The D.C. Chief Financial Officer previously estimated that the program would cost between $3 and $18 million a year, depending on how many citywide candidates are on the ballot.

More than two-dozen jurisdictions nationwide already have public financing in place, including Montgomery County. It completed its last election with such a program. Supporters say that while tweaks can still be made, public financing increased the pool of candidates there and made more candidates competitive.

“We see some candidates who ran specifically because public funding was there. And we saw a lot of candidates, both incumbents and very fresh faces, coming in and running their campaigns in a very different way under the program,” said Damon Effingham, the executive director of Common Cause Maryland, which supports public financing programs.

One of those candidates was Council member Hans Riemer (D-At Large), who ran traditionally funded campaigns in 2010 and 2014 and opted for public financing this year. He also faced more than two-dozen challengers in June’s Democratic primary, some of whom opted for public financing.

“I spent all of my time on the fundraising side just talking to friends, neighbors, people who care about the county asking them for reasonable donations. Would you be willing to support me with a $5 contribution? A $50 contribution? Modest amounts of money that were reasonable for people and meaningful to the campaign,” he said.

Public financing programs are set to take effect in Howard County in 2022 and Prince George’s County in 2026.

Ending ‘pay to play’ in D.C.

Where the public financing program seeks to give candidates access to a new source of campaign funding, the campaign finance reform bill unanimously approved by the Council this week aims to curtail other sources.

When it fully takes effect in 2022 — in time for the city’s next mayoral election — the bill will prohibit businesses and individuals seeking D.C. government contracts worth more than $250,000 or any tax abatements from contributing to the campaigns of the elected official who issued or might vote on the contract or tax abatement.

Proponents say this seeks to end allegations of “pay to play,” where businesses seeking contracts with the city donate heavily to the campaigns of the officials in charge of approving them. (The Council votes on all contracts above $1 million, and has to approve any tax abatements.) Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York City have similar restrictions in place.

The bill will also prohibit lobbyists from bundling campaign contributions, and will require that campaign debts will have to be settled and accounts closed out within a year. There’s currently no requirement that a candidate close out their campaign account with any timeframe. That means elected officials can continue to fundraise while in office to pay off campaign debt, some of it which may exist in the form of personal loans to their campaigns.

Contributions to inaugural committees and legal defense committees will be lowered from $10,000 per person now to $2,000 per person. Contributions to political action committees will be restricted to the same limits in non-election years as in election years; that was not the case in 2015, a loophole allies of Mayor Muriel Bowser took advantage of with a political action committee known as FreshPAC.

The bill also pulls the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance, which enforces the law, out from under the Board of Elections, giving it instead its own independent board. That, says Allen, will give the board broader authority to enforce campaign finance rules.

Advocates say the bill is a necessary tool to curtail the power of businesses, lobbyists and developers who have an active presence in the Wilson Building and regularly contribute to campaigns and candidates come election time. And even if actual cases of political corruption are few and far between, the advocates say the perception of an unfair playing field can be just as corrosive. A 2017 Washington Post poll found that almost half of D.C. voters felt the city hasn’t done enough to limit the influence of wealthy donors.

“Residents of the District over and over again have made clear to elected officials that they don’t like the hint or appearance of impropriety,” said Attorney General Karl Racine, whose office proposed the bill banning contributions from contractors. “And where they see it oftentimes is in the government contracts or other deals the city extends to companies and principals at companies who are also very significant political contributors.”

But the law has critics even among good-government watchdogs, including Dorothy Brizill, the executive director of D.C. Watch. She says the bill addresses pay-to-play problems that don’t exist, and makes enforcement difficult because of the measure’s length and complexity.

“I believe you should have a simple law that people can understand, and then if they violate it you can stomp on them with both feet. Not one that you’ve got to go and get a Philadelphia lawyer and say, ‘How do I even file my basic campaign finance report?’” she said.

Former Council candidate Bryan Weaver doesn’t disagree that the law could be simpler. But he says officials weren’t interested in what he argues would be the simplest solution of all: fully banning corporate contributions to campaigns, as he tried to do with a ballot initiative in 2012. The measure never made it to the ballot.

“If half of the states, or at the federal level, don’t allow direct corporate contributions, then maybe that’s something we should follow,” said Weaver. “The Council has decided that’s not anything they want to take on, so this is what they wanted to do instead. In an imperfect world, this is a good step.”

Both public financing and this week’s campaign finance reform bill passed unanimously, which Allen says is evidence that there was broad consensus after years of halting debates and unsuccessful legislative attempts that something needed to be done. And he says the Council’s measures won’t push D.C. ahead of many jurisdictions, instead it will simply catch the city up to what other places are already doing.

“The laws needed to change. The equity needed to change. The ability for new candidates and new ideas to have a shot and be at the table needed to change,” he said.

With additional reporting by Dominique Maria Bonessi. This story originally appeared at WAMU.