On January 24, the City Council is going to consider a bill that would grant some relief to Mayor Dinkins from campaign speech restrictions dating from 1993. That’s the last time he ran for city wide office, and the effort to get his message out, which cost some $11.6 million, has left his organization still saddled with $200,000 in debts. The money, our Benj. Smith reported yesterday, is owed to, among others, a well-connected law firm; the Brooklyn Academy of Music; a restaurant called the Water Club, and a famous political dirt-digger, Terry Lenzner. Mr. Dinkins’ friends — and Council Member Wm. Perkins — reckon that there can be little harm in amending the law so that Mr. Dinkins and other retired politicians can pay off these debts. “You don’t want people going broke because they’re trying to represent their community,” Mr. Perkins was quoted by Mr. Smith as saying. “It isn’t against the spirit of the campaign finance program for Dave Dinkins or anybody to try to raise money to close a debt.”

We couldn’t agree more, and we’ll be delighted if the City Council grants Mr. Dinkins relief from New York City’s ludicrous regulations for candidates that accept matching funds. The opt-in system is at the same time too generous to candidates at taxpayer expense and too restrictive of candidates’ efforts to raise money from private donors — and even those candidates that choose not to opt-in to the matching fund system are bound by a $30,000 contribution limit by state campaign finance law. Perhaps consideration of Mr. Dinkins’s dilemma will lead council members to the realization that regulations passed ostensibly to ameliorate the impact of big money on campaigns do exactly the opposite. They hurt the non-rich candidate who needs to raise money from other than his own bank account. Whenever Mr. Bloomberg gets tired of being mayor or is turned out of office, after all, he’s not going to need a special exemption from the regulations to pay off his backers. The people who are going to need it are the people who faced hurdles getting into politics in the first place. Mark the Dinkins Bailout as an opportunity to start rethinking campaign speech restrictions in the city.