Portland Campaign Finance Experiment

This is interesting. It seems our friendly neighborhood city councilmen have gotten together and decided that big money steals elections and that we should use public money to even the odds a bit. Here's the catch - we as citizens don't get a say.
Well, not yet, anyway.

The Portland City Council voted 3-1 Wednesday to let voters decide in 2010 whether they want to keep offering public campaign financing to City Hall candidates, assuming they approve the funding plan next week.

Understand? We get to vote in 2010 whether we want to keep this campaign funding experiment after it's already been used for 5 years. Actually, as Jack Bog explains, the language of the resolution doesn't actually mandate the referral to the voters, just instructs a future council to write up a referral to the voters. Will it actually every happen? That's not up to the current posse.
The Oregonian took issue with the council in an editorial on Tuesday.

Surely, before launching something called "voter-owned elections," it would be polite to inquire whether voters want to buy what the council hopes to sell.

Over at Portland Communique, the One True b!X has a detailed post on exactly what happened in this meeting of the minds (?) over at the city center, and what they decided. I was pleased to see that Randy Leonard opposed the resolution, while the other three voted for it.
b!X noted that this might not be allowed under the state and local laws governing referrals. One point is that when referring something to voters, the law being referred might not be able to be implemented until it has gone before the voting public. The other is the issue of trying to dictate what a future council will do, i.e. refer the issue to voters in 2010.
I'm also wondering if anyone is noting that this will just give some city money to prospective candidates for city auditor, council and mayor. If those crooks want to raise millions on the side as well, they can do that. It's designed to give some money to candidates who are running against an incumbent who's got lots of dough.
But since in the last election Tom Potter soundly beat a much better financed Jim Francesconi, does anyone really think this is going to help our political system at all (and is there a problem)?