A little noticed and until recently unenforced provision of an ethics law passed in 2000 will allow big-money campaign donors to have more influence on future elections.

The amount donors can contribute to candidates for statewide office has risen $2,300 since 2006 and will continue to rise each election cycle. For candidates for the state Legislature, the limit has jumped $800 in the same period.

The law says campaign contribution limits should be increased each election cycle, based on the consumer price index.

The most recent increase came this month. Individual donors can now give statewide candidates $11,800 — and an additional $3,500 if they face a runoff. Presidential candidates' limit, by comparison, is $2,300 each for the primary and general election.

The State Ethics Commission, citing the 2000 law, began increasing the limits in 2007, a year after Rick Thompson became executive secretary and discovered it had not been enforced.

Some legislators who voted for the law in 2000 said they had no idea it held automatic increases that lawmakers would never need to sign off on.

"I am probably under-fund-raising. I have been operating on the old limits," said Rep. Ben Harbin (R-Evans). "I don't remember that discussion or debate occurring at all on the House floor. That's news to me."

The provision was in a bill former Gov. Roy Barnes backed that increased the amount state officials and lawmakers could collect from individuals and political action committees. The limits were raised, and, under the law, would keep going up.

Two years later, the Democrat Barnes set campaign fund-raising records using the new limits approved in 2000, but lost his re-election bid to Sonny Perdue. That election started a Statehouse shift to Republicans. The GOP is now reaping the benefits of the bill approved by the then-Democrat-dominated General Assembly.

Bobby Kahn, who was Barnes' chief of staff, said the intent was to mirror federal rules by indexing contribution limits to inflation. "$1,000 in 2008 doesn't buy what $1,000 in 1975 bought," he said.

Thompson said the commission increased the limits last year to what they would have been if the law had been used since it took effect in 2001.

The recent increases' size surprised Bill Bozarth of the watchdog group Common Cause Georgia.

"We ought to be out there fighting to lower [limits], or at least put some constraints on them," Bozarth said. "What happens is candidates get all these contributions to run in a race where they don't have significant opposition."

They then give the money to fellow lawmakers to help them win races, he said. Bozarth thinks that practice should be curtailed.

"It didn't seem like a bad idea at the time to index [limits] to inflation, but when you see the impact, you may have a different opinion," he said.

Harbin said lawmakers should be forced to play a more direct role in increasing contribution limits.

"It's something that ought to be done through a public process saying 'yes,' we are going to increase it,' " the lawmaker said. "You can justify it because the cost of advertising goes up. But I don't think there should be a mechanism where it just goes up automatically.

"We should have some hand or say in it. You can't push everything off to these [government] authorities. That's something that directly affects us."

CEILING GOES UP

Changes in campaign contribution limits, per donor, for statewide candidates who face a primary, runoff and general election:

Limits for legislators who have primaries, runoff and general election, per donor

— Source: State Ethics Commission