Joel Burgess at the Asheville Citizen-Times writes about how expensive it's getting to run for a City Council seat, and about the law recently passed in North Carolina allowing Chapel Hill to pursue a Clean Elections public financing option for its races to control costs and open the door for people without access to wealth to run for office.

As the costs of running for office go up, the pool of candidates gets smaller:

Higher costs mean fewer people can afford to run and elected officials are more beholden to big donors, said Jim Barton, an Asheville resident who runs an alternative agriculture school. Barton donated to Elaine Lite, who lost, and incumbent Brownie Newman, who won.

“Increasingly, there is a tendency for people with money to be buying public policy that favors them, instead of having public policy made on the basis of what is good for all of us and what is good a decade or two down the line,” Barton said.

Chapel Hill will try out public financing in 2009. Perhaps other cities in North Carolina, which already has public financing available for judicial races and three Council of State races, will follow suit.