Philadelphia - After a week of roasting in the fires of media outrage and good government groups' criticism of his proposal to suspend campaign contribution limits when candidates make extraordinary contributions to their own campaigns, Councilman Jim Kenney Thursday offered a second, weaker, proposal. Under his new plan candidates would see donation limits, currently $5,000 for individuals and $20,000 for corporations or political action committees, merely double after one candidate puts $2 million or more of their own money into their own campaign. The proposal is clearly aimed at Tom Knox, a Democratic candidate for mayor who has already donated $5 million to his campaign and is promising to donate as much as $10 million more.

After he heard Knox was having 250 guests to dinner at the Moonstruck restaurant in Fox Chase yesterday Kenney noted, "You have to recognize this really is no free lunch. As an elected official if I were to do something like this I would be severely criticized. This is a high end establishment not a coffee klatch.

" Kenney is not withdrawing his original legislation, introduced last week, proposing to remove campaign donation limits after one candidate puts $2 million into their own campaign. Michael Nutter, a candidate for mayor and a leading advocate for campaign finance reform during his tenure on City Council commented, "[Councilman Kenney] now wants to substitute a 'sliding scale' of donations that exceed the city's campaign finance limits. However, this latest attempt to amend the campaign limits is just a back-door way to accomplish the same goal.

"Only in Philadelphia could a less bad law be considered better. With city indictments coming down like raindrops and one former councilman in jail, our elected officials should be trying to stop any effort to repeal the contribution limits. City Council should stop fiddling with the law while Philadelphia is burning down from corruption and indictments.

"The citizens of this city have had enough. I call on all of the mayoral candidates to publicly join me in rejecting this new effort to take our city back into the swamp of pay-to-play." Zack Stalberg, President and CEO of the Philadelphia good government group Committee of Seventy, responded to Kenney's new proposal saying, ""The new ordinance makes a total mockery of campaign finance reform.

It is staggering to believe that Council would even consider changing the rules of the game in the middle of the mayoral primary. Will there be a new campaign finance law introduced next week, and the week after that? At what point does Council say 'enough is enough'?

"Councilman Kenney's new idea to redouble the already-doubled campaign finance limits is as damaging as eliminating those limits altogether." Stalberg called the proposal "misguided.