At yesterday afternoon’s surprisingly entertaining city council meeting (maybe it was the sunny weather, maybe there was a pre-session martini lunch), the Citizen Campaign Commission presented their final recommendations on fixing Portland’s publicly funded campaigns.

The commission has decided to keep the numbers the same—candidates will still need to get 1,000 $5 contributions in order to get $145,000 from the public campaign fund. But they’ve lightened up the penalties for “honest mistakes,” and set up a system to catch Emilie Boyles-sized fraud quickly. Plus, only registered Portland voters will be allowed to contribute.

Weirdly, the most contentious part of their report turned out to be a recommendation to not allow candidates to get their $5 contributions from credit cards. The reason, the commission members explained, was that they wanted to foster face-to-face grassroots campaigning—allowing credit cards would mean that candidates could run strictly web-based campaigns.

Commissioner Sam Adams, though, didn’t see why that was a bad thing, arguing that candidates, including Amanda Fritz, have already used campaign workers, or volunteers—essentially, surrogates—to gather contributions, so there’s already a buffer between the public and the candidates. Why not allow for web campaigning?

This set off a friendly, yet heated exchange between Adams and Randy Leonard, who, even though they were arguing with and addressing each other, were both staring straight ahead at the audience. Adams called Leonard’s support of the recommendation “intellectually inconsistent,” and Leonard jokingly accused Adams of running at the mouth.

“I only have so much time on this planet,” Adams said, perhaps still reeling from the series of jaw surgeries he’s had in the past three months. “This is the first time I’ve talked about this this afternoon, so let me talk.”

The issue might seem minor, but it exposes a much larger question: Is “netroots” campaigning equally as valid—and as worthy of city support—as traditional “grassroots” campaigning?

Where it was once an oddity--see the media attention to Howard Dean's campaign in 2003/04--web-based organizing has now become an integral and inescapable part of modern campaigning. Netroots contributions arguably made the difference in some 2006 senate and congressional races, and it's already playing into the 2008 senate race in Oregon. The bloggers of Loaded Orygun attempted to use online contributions to convince Peter DeFazio to run for senate, Steve Novick is already poised to be a netroots candidate, and the Democratic Party of Oregon has created StopGordonSmith.com to raise money and interest in defeating Smith.

So why should a city race be any different? Why shouldn't candidates hoping to qualify for public money be able to use the web to gather contributions, and does the commission's (and maybe city council's) reluctance show that the city hasn't quite grasped the concept yet? Are we behind the times?

Here's something else I learned yesterday--Diet Squirt has become the new official drink of Adams' office, replacing Fresca. My grandfather used to drink Squirt like water, and I hadn't had any since he passed away more than a decade ago. I must say, after drinking a can of it yesterday afternoon, that it's every bit as delicious and refreshing as I remember--even if it's "diet." So thanks, Commissioner Adams. That was some delicious payola.

p.s. If you're ever planning on doing a Google Image Search for the term "Squirt," I highly recommend you keep Safe Search on. All the way on.