Ventura County Supervisors Steve Bennett and Kathy Long appear to have the votes they need today locked up for their revisions to the county's campaign finance rules.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote today on a new campaign finance ordinance. It would differ from the existing one in just a few ways: The most anyone can contribute to a candidate who accepts voluntary spending limits, or to an independent expenditure committee, would increase from $600 to $700. The maximum donation to a candidate who does not accept the voluntary spending limit would go from $300 to $350.

It would not affect the overall voluntary spending limits, which are automatically adjusted every two years. The limit for the 2008 election season is $173,000 for a candidate for the Board of Supervisors, and $577,000 for sheriff, district attorney and other countywide elected offices. Candidates may not begin raising money until one year before the election.

The new ordinance also would allow candidates who accept the limits to be released from their pledge if they have an opponent who rejects the limits, and who then spends more than 25 percent of the maximum. The current threshold is 75 percent of the limit.

And, the new ordinance would require an outside attorney to review any alleged violations before it goes to the County Campaign Finance Ethics Commission. The attorney would forward to the commission only those complaints that show "probable cause" of a violation. The probable cause ruling is now made by an ethics commissioner.

"The primary goal is to decrease the influence of money in politics," Bennett said Monday. "The first way to do that is to make sure people aren't making great big contributions. ... The second way is to decrease the amount of money candidates spend on their campaigns."

Bennett and the law's other supporters say it's a proven success before the rules went into effect in 2003, candidates sometimes spent twice as much as the current limits. Individual donors gave tens of thousands of dollars to some candidates.

Last week's Board of Supervisors meeting included a sharp back-and-forth on the proposed ordinance. Two supervisors, Peter Foy and John Flynn, said they are against the county's existing policy, as well as the proposed revisions.

That leaves Bennett, Long and Linda Parks as probable "yes" votes, enough for the ordinance to pass.

Foy said last week that the county's regulations "do not allow the average person to conduct a campaign competitively."

"It gives a small, elite group the people who can self-fund their campaigns a special advantage," he said, because there are no limits on how much of their own money candidates can give to their campaigns.

Foy, who was elected last year to his first term, is a member of that small group. He raised about $300,000, and all but $80,000 came as loans to his own campaign.

Foy also said the rules are too expensive to enforce. The county is spending at least $100,000 a year monitoring the candidates' reports and investigating possible violations, Del Tompkins, the county's deputy executive officer, told the board. Tompkins said she sometimes works nearly full time on campaign finance.

The number of complaints to the Campaign Finance Ethics Commission exploded last year there were 15, up from one in 2005 and two in 2004. The county had to hire attorneys to investigate them instead of using the volunteers it had planned on.

Nine of the 15 complaints from last year met the probable cause standard and are being investigated, Tompkins said. They will be evaluated by the Ethics Commission, which is made up of county residents appointed by each supervisor and approved by a judge.

Bennett said the money the county is spending is worth it.

"Let's say it costs $100,000 or $150,000," he said. "We're a $1.5 billion enterprise here. If that's what it costs for us to dramatically decrease the role of big money in politics, that's the role of good government."