This election season in Oregon has been an expensive one, with the race for governor setting new spending records. It’s no wonder then, that the idea of limits on campaign spending looks attractive.

It looks especially attractive to Gov. Kate Brown, who promised during the campaign to send to voters a constitutional amendment to allow the state to set contribution limits. That’s a mistake that chips away at free speech.

We don’t know anyone who is overjoyed that campaign spending is doing nothing but increasing.

This year, for example, Brown and her main opponent, Knute Buehler, spent roughly $36 million between them on the governor’s race. That comes out to nearly $20 for each of the 1.87 million votes cast Tuesday.

Yet setting limits without violating both federal and state Supreme Court rulings that political contributions are, in fact, speech, is difficult, as it should be. Moreover, determined contributors always find a way to make large gifts that do not violate election laws.

Brown pushed to get the law changed in 2015, and while voters agreed to limits, they correctly rejected the constitutional amendment that would have made the limits legal. They recognized, even if the governor did not, the link between contributions and political free speech.

The Democratic Party in Oregon, meanwhile, has platform language that calls for publicly funded elections, a scheme the city of Portland tried and rejected a few years ago and will try again in 2019. As for state-level financing, Oregon already has trouble paying for schools, Medicaid and a host of critical programs.

Rather than attempting to rewrite the state constitution or adopting a public financing scheme, lawmakers should look once again at tightening rules governing campaign donations.

Quick reporting of contributions, and making that reporting public equally quick, is the sort of reform that honors free speech as well as the public’s right to know who’s financing elections.