Once you're in, you're in - but how do you get there? That's a question hopefuls for the Los Angeles City Council might be asking themselves now that term limits have been extended - a move anticipated to make ousting an incumbent from the well-entrenched Council even harder. It has some in the city questioning whether public financing would shake things up a bit.

Even before the term limits were relaxed, superior name recognition and a guaranteed fundraising base gave incumbents a near lock on re-election. So what is a candidate who wants to bring fresh ideas to the table to do to make him or herself competitive with an incumbent Councilman? Bill Boyarsky of the city Ethics Commission thinks LA needs a public financing option for elections to counter the financial advantage of incumbents, saying ""Public financing would make it easier for a person to get into the race against the incumbent. The person would still be an underdog because the incumbent has name recognition, but at least it would give someone a better chance."