Open-government groups fighting with political ethics watchdog

Good morning. Happy hump day. We start with an interesting read from the Los Angeles Times about good government groups fighting with the FPPC.

“A rare and heated dispute has erupted between California’s campaign finance regulators and open-government groups that have accused the watchdog agency of pressuring them to rescind their support for legislation designed to show who is funding political ads.

“Supporters of the bill criticized the state Fair Political Practices Commission for heavy-handed tactics that they said included pushing groups the commission has the power to investigate and fine to drop their support for the transparency bill.

“‘It’s really inappropriate for a regulator who has enormous power over organizations to call up those organizations over which they have power, and lobby them,’ said Trent Lange, president of California Clean Money Campaign. ‘It’s just inherently intimidating to have your regulator call you and ask you to do something.’

“Michele Sutter, co-founder of the group Money Out Voters In, called it ‘shocking behavior by the FPPC.'”

The Los Angeles Times has more.

In other news:

• “In addition to their six-figure salaries and benefits, California’s 120 lawmakers are compensated for their cost of living and meals when they leave home and travel to Sacramento to write and pass bills. Unlike in many other states, however, California lawmakers have over time crafted loosely worded rules for themselves that allow them to collect those payments regardless of whether they even show up to work,” reports AP/The San Jose Mercury News. 

• “Kamala Harris, in the final weeks of her U.S. Senate campaign against fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez, released a higher education plan Tuesday calling for making public colleges and universities free for students whose families earn less than $140,000 a year. She also wants to allow borrowers to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.” The Sacramento Bee has more. 

• “The retiring forecaster for California’s largest public employee pension fund offered some final advice on Tuesday: State and local governments should be required to pay more into the system as soon as next year.” The Los Angeles Times has more.

• “A prominent group advocating for LGBT rights has withdrawn its endorsement of six state Assembly members because they abstained or voted against a bill aimed at protecting gay and transgender students from discrimination at private colleges,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

   

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @claireconlon

The Fair Political Practices Commission found that in seven instances Yee’s state controller campaign did not file certain campaign finance disclosures in the time frame required by law — although the FPPC also found no evidence of intent to conceal.

The late disclosures were periodic reports, totaling only $68,000. By contrast, the campaign in total raised more than $1.5 million in 2014.

Earlier this month, The Sacramento Bee reported that Yee’s campaign treasurer, Jane Leiderman of Leiderman and Associates, took responsibility for the disclosure violations and agreed to pay the fine. 

“It’s always unfortunate when there is not compliance, and I do regret that the FPPC imposed the fine,” Yee told The Bee. “My treasurer has taken full responsibility, and everything has been handled responsibly.”

On Thursday, July 14, Fair Political Practices Commission Chair Jodi Remke and John Mayer, president and CEO of California Forward (a government and political reform advocacy group), will host a webinar to kick off the first of two rounds of public participation to create a comprehensive overhaul of the act.  

Incumbents and candidates complain of an overly complicated system. The FPPC receives between 15,000-to-20,000 requests every year for advice from candidates and public officials.

Numerous legislative and voter-approved updates have left an “overly complex, cumbersome and sometimes contradictory” law, Remke said.

“This process is designed to simplify and streamline the act without weakening it or losing any accountability,” Remke said.

Law students at UC Berkeley and UC Davis have also contributed to the process by reviewing the law and making recommendations to the FPPC. And California Forward will help raise public awareness of the coalition’s efforts.

The Political Reform Act was passed in 1974, just two months before President Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal, with the protracted scandal highlighting the need for political ethics legislation. 

The law created the FPPC and regulated campaign finance, among other things. The original ballot summary is here:

“Requires reports of receipts and expenditures in campaigns for state and local offices and ballot measures. Limits expenditures for statewide candidates and measures. Prohibits public officials from participating in governmental decisions affecting their ‘financial interests.’ Requires disclosure of certain assets and income by certain public officials. Requires ‘Lobbyists’ to register and file reports showing receipts and expenditures in lobbying activities. Creates fair political practices commission. Revises ballot pamphlet requirements. Provides criminal and civil sanctions for violations. Enacts and repeals statutes on other miscellaneous and above matters.”

Currently, anyone who spends $5,000 or more to influence legislative or administrative action is required quarterly to disclose payments to lobbying firms, payments to lobbyists, activity expenses and other payments to influence legislative or administrative action.

The regulation, which will go into effect July 1 — meaning it’ll start showing up in October just before the election — makes it so the fourth category “other payments to influence” will be itemized. As it stands now, that fourth category has become a catchall with no accountability.

This “other payments” classification could include hiring consultants — such as former politicians who aren’t registered lobbyists — or the cost of advertising, hiring a public affairs firm, media consulting firm, or even something simple like paying rent.

But no one really knows on a case-by-case basis, since up until now it’s just reported as a top line amount with no specificity.

And groups are more regularly relying on this ambiguous classification. For example, the 10 interest groups that regularly spend the most on lobbying have gone from 52 percent of their total amount reported as “other payments” in 2000 to 69 percent in 2014, according to the Fair Political Practices Commission report.

Total spending has increased as well, up 34 percent over that same period of time among the top 10.

“There are two main goals behind the regulation, to increase transparency and promote compliance,” said FPPC Chair Jodi Remke in a statement. “As for transparency, the public is entitled to know who is trying to influence public officials and how they are doing it. As for compliance, lobbying is largely a self-regulated industry and requiring more detailed reporting is the most effective tool to promote compliance and facilitate enforcement against improper activity.”

The threshold for itemization will be $2,500 per expense, broken out into multiple categories, including salary, lobbyist expenses, legislative-related services, consultants and government relations, public affairs, advertising, research, lobbying events and other. Disclosing the name and address of the payee will also be required.

Critics say because the $2,500 threshold is so low, the new law imposes cumbersome reporting requirements on filers, particularly now in the middle of an election cycle, and the privacy of employees whose names will be published will be violated with little value to the public.

“These are individuals within many organizations who are not registered lobbyists, and while they may engage in some direct lobbying communications, they do not qualify as lobbyists,” wrote Diane M. Fishburn and Richard R. Rios of the law firm Olson, Hagel and Fishburn, in a letter to the FPPC.

“We ask that the commission recognize that there is little if any value to the public in the disclosure of the individual names and addresses or the salaries paid to these individuals,” continued Fishburn and Rios, whose firm represents the California State Council of Service Employees, an SEIU affiliate.

Photo courtesy of atlantablackstar.com

The Senate campaign of California Attorney General Kamala Harris has displeased Democratic insiders, who worry that their leading candidate to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer hasn’t run a tight enough ship.

Spokesman Nathan Click recently admitted the operation was “changing campaign managers and making moves to reduce costs,” after what the Sacramento Bee reported was “unusually heavy spending in recent months.”

“Click said the campaign was making spending cuts involving consultants and staff but declined to detail them,” the Bee noted, although the resignation of campaign manager Rory Steele — replaced by senior adviser Juan Rodriguez — was not as easily concealed.

At issue was the campaign’s eyebrow-raising spending, which included repeated, relatively lavish expenditures on Harris’s hotel accommodations. “Cam­paigns typ­ic­ally shell out big bucks on me­dia buys, staff salaries and ex­pens­ive fun­draisers. But spend­ing it on hous­ing, par­tic­u­larly when far cheap­er op­tions are avail­able, is atyp­ic­al, cam­paign vet­er­ans say, and even Har­ris’s fel­low Demo­crats have taken no­tice,” according to National Journal:

“It’s not as if the Cali­for­nia at­tor­ney gen­er­al had money to burn, either. She’s already spent more than 40 per­cent of the $6 mil­lion she’s raised since be­com­ing a can­did­ate in Janu­ary, an alarm­ing burn rate for a can­did­ate who is also on her second cam­paign man­ager and third fin­ance dir­ect­or. In her latest fun­drais­ing re­port, cov­er­ing the peri­od of Ju­ly through Septem­ber, the dis­crep­ancy between money com­ing in and money go­ing out was es­pe­cially acute: $1.8 mil­lion to $1.4 mil­lion.”

Champagne tastes

Compounding the problem, Harris’s taste for high-end living recently landed her in a crisis of a different sort — a state ethics probe involving the Fair Political Practices Commission.

“A $21,000 spruce-up of her San Francisco loft by designer-to-the-stars Ken Fulk wound up putting state Attorney General Kamala Harris under the microscope for possibly accepting an illegal gift,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “The A.G. eventually ended up in the clear — but not before cutting a check for more than $10,000.” After the FPPC made some inquiries, “Harris asked Fulk for an accounting for any money she still owed on the job and sent in a final check for $10,245,” the paper added.

California law bars elected state officials “from receiving a gift or gifts totaling more than $460 in a calendar year,” according to the Los Angeles Times, “with a few exceptions.”

Even with her name cleared by the FPPC, Harris has faced a difficult time turning the page on the broader pattern of conduct underscored by her relationship with Fulk. “Har­ris’s frivol­ous spend­ing on air­fare, lux­ury cars, and ho­tels is highly un­usu­al for a Sen­ate can­did­ate that has a re­l­at­ively com­pet­it­ive race,” one nation­al Demo­crat­ic strategist told National Journal. “And the cam­paign is in the fin­an­cial mess that it’s in be­cause of its de­cision to do those things.”

New vulnerability

The scrutiny directed at Harris would be significant regardless of her position heading toward the state primary election. But with California’s new top-two runoff system, known as the “jungle” primary, her missteps have taken on much greater significance. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who also wants to succeed Boxer, has been running a less polished underdog campaign. But she has begun to expand her base of support beyond Southern California, where it remains very strong. According to the Orange County Register, Sanchez recently roped in Central Valley endorsements from Rep. Jim Costa, D-Frenso, and former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, and even made inroads in Harris’s San Francisco backyard with a nod from Silicon Valley Rep. Anna Eshoo.

With Republicans divided and the state GOP occasionally willing to simply sit out an election in the hopes of helping control the winning Democrat’s agenda, Harris has looked increasingly vulnerable. “Sanchez is more of an ideological centrist, as shown by her most recent spate of endorsements, and thus would more naturally draw support from business and conservative groups, as well as Republican voters,” Dan Walters noted at the San Jose Mercury News. In addition to wiping out a gender gap, “Sanchez could pull Latino votes away from Harris.” The momentum has California’s Northern California liberal establishment on edge, fearing the specter of the more left-leaning candidate losing out in yet another runoff election.

A state lawmaker wants to double the reporting threshold for political campaigns in California — allowing major donors to contribute more money and campaigns to spend more money before filing a disclosure report.

Under the Political Reform Act of 1974, as modified by later laws, candidate and independent expenditure committees must file disclosure reports after accepting $1,000 or more in a calendar year. Similarly, the state requires major donors to file campaign reports after contributing $10,000 or more in a calendar year.

Assemblyman Richard Gordon, D-Menlo Park, believes it’s time to increase those disclosure limits. Assembly Bill 594 would require candidate and independent expenditure committees to file a disclosure report after spending $2,000 or more in a calendar year. The reporting threshold for major donors would increase from $10,000 to $20,000 or more.

Political amateurs punished by campaign finance laws

Since his election to the state Assembly in 2010, Gordon has carved out a special niche in campaign finance legislation with bills to increase regulation and disclosure requirements. In 2012, Gordon authored Assembly Bill 481, which added new reporting requirements for independent expenditure and major donor committees. Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Gordon’s bill, Assembly Bill 800, to give the Fair Political Practices Commission “the authority to conduct immediate audits when political campaigns are suspected of illegal activity and requires subcontractors and sub-vendors to disclose their donations.”

State-level political campaigns continue to be big budget blockbusters. According to the Sacramento Bee’s analysis of campaign finance reports, “candidates and independent groups collectively spent at least $150 million on Assembly and Senate contests statewide over the two-year election cycle.”

Why would a Democratic politician with a record of authoring campaign finance laws seemingly aid money in politics? Like his previous campaign finance proposals, Gordon’s current legislation has support from the state’s campaign watchdog, which argued that low campaign spending limits reduce political participation.

In a memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Erin Peth, executive director of the FPPC, said that the current campaign finance rules “can be a barrier for those individuals who wish to participate, but who will not be raising or spending large amounts of money in connection with an election.” Peth also argued, “Committee qualification thresholds have not been updated since at least 1987 and the proposed increases in the bill are intended to adjust the thresholds with the rate of inflation.”

According to the Inflation Calculator of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, when adjusted for the rising in the cost of living, $1,000 in 1987 is the equivalent of $2,066 today.

The rationale for higher limits is supported by pro-freedom campaign finance experts, who strongly defend political contributions as a protected form of political speech. Complex campaign finance laws force average citizens to seek legal counsel before engaging in political organizing.

“While serving on the FEC from 2000 to 2005, I kept a file of letters from political amateurs caught in the maw of campaign-finance laws,” Bradley Smith, a law professor and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, wrote in 2007. “Many of these people had no lawyers; none had the least intent to corrupt any officeholder; and all thought that they were fulfilling their civic duty by their involvement in campaigns.”

Top Two Primary could lead to more low-budget upsets

A higher campaign reporting threshold also increases the chances that those amateurs turn pro. Aided by California’s Top Two primary, which was passed by state voters in 2010, unknown candidates have been able to exceed political expectations, even achieve remarkable upsets, with low-budget campaigns. With higher reporting levels, these candidates will be able to operate in the dark for longer without tipping off incumbents.

Last November, unknown community activist Patty Lopez failed to report any expenditures in the primary campaign, despite spending a few thousands dollars. That failure to report resulted in a $400 fine by the FPPC. In the general election, she went on to upset fellow Democrat, Asm. Raul Bocanegra.

“I made a few mistakes, and I paid the price for that,” Lopez said after the election. “Most of the people on my team, we’re not in the political arena.”

Lopez’s campaign finances weren’t managed by a campaign professional, just a family friend who was willing to serve as treasurer. That’s exactly the type of grassroots campaign political watchdogs hope to encourage with relaxed campaign finance regulations.

Her victory is proof that low-budget long-shots have the potential to win. Although it’s unlikely that Bocanegra would have been intimidated by a few thousands dollars of campaign spending, some political observers believe the lack of campaign finance disclosure contributed to the perception that she wasn’t a serious threat.

Opportunity for political professionals to exploit

By aiding political amateurs with higher reporting levels, state regulators also could empower creative political professionals to exploit the outcome of primary races. In multi-candidate primary elections, political professionals could spend just under $2,000 in online ads or automated calls backing a decoy candidate.

Such a scenario has already played out in this year’s special election for the 7th State Senate District. A Democrat-led political action committee, the Asian American Small Business PAC, spent $46,380 on behalf of Michaela Hertle, a Republican candidate who had dropped out of the race.

By backing the lone Republican candidate, the political action committee hoped to thwart moderate Democrat Steve Glazer, who had built his campaign strategy on appealing to Republicans and independent voters. Glazer ultimately advanced to the May run-off against fellow Democrat, Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla. But Hertle had an impact, garnering 15 percent of the vote.

But Assemblyman Richard Gordon, D-Menlo Park, and the staff of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, California’s chief political watchdog, want to go in a different direction. FPPC staffers have endorsed AB 594, Gordon’s measure modifying the landmark Political Reform Act of 1974. This is from the L.A. Times:

Citing inflation, the state’s campaign finance watchdog agency is considering a proposal to raise the fundraising thresholds at which campaigns must report their financing, drawing some concerns from an advocate for fuller disclosure.

Currently, campaign committees and independent expenditure committees must report their fundraising and spending when they receive contributions of $1,000 or more in a calendar year. The state Fair Political Practices Commission staff is recommending that the panel support legislation that would raise that level to $2,000.

In addition, contributors must file special “major donor” reports disclosing all donations they make when they give $10,000 in a calendar year. The bill recommended by the FPPC staff would raise that threshold to $20,000.

Gordon depicted the measure as promoting democracy in comments to the Times:

“The proposed increases, while below what an adjustment for inflation would be, are intended to recognize that the cost of a true grassroots campaign has increased over this time and would allow those campaigns to still operate without the burden associated with filings.”

But the “burden” he cites has been diminishing for two decades, thanks to technology. At the national level, here’s where the campaign finance debate has been focused:

What’s the solution? Spending limits are off the table; like it or not, the Supreme Court is unlikely to reverse itself anytime soon. That leaves transparency as the issue to tackle. Mindful of potential First Amendment problems, Congress should revisit a policy Republicans offered in defiance of McCain-Feingold: Unlimited donations coupled with immediate transparency.

What could be a more modern, tech-fueled reform than requiring political candidates and groups to simultaneously deposit and disclose? Open-government groups could develop apps enabling voters to track donations to certain members of Congress or from specific interest groups, with customized alerts sent to their mobile devices.

That’s from the Jan. 27 column of Ron Fournier in the National Journal. Fournier is the former Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press.

The FPPC board is expected to discuss Gordon’s bill at its meeting Thursday.

Richard Pan, a physician, took in just over $2,800 in gifts and travel payments, including a $440 outing at a San Francisco Giants baseball game, compliments of the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Pan is now a Democratic state senator representing a Sacramento district.

And Jeff Stone, whose business, Innovative Compounding Pharmacy, is worth over $1 million, took 25 pages to document his property holdings, including a number of manufactured home rentals. The Riverside County Republican, too, is part of the state Senate’s freshman class.

Their financial information is part of the new filings of statements of economic interest for 2014, which went online Tuesday and are available for public perusal.

It’s the first filing for the freshman class of both the Assembly and the Senate — and for the public, it’s the first time to get a glimpse of their wealth as well as their perks.

Elected in November, taking gifts in December

Some got off to a quick start. Ling-Ling Chang, a new Republican assemblywoman from Chino Hills, declared $2,433 in travel payments over four days in December. In that period, she participated in an education symposium for the California Charter Schools Association for $1,258 and a policy summit for TechNet, a group that lobbies for tech giants with a hub in Los Altos, for which she claimed $1,175.

At the same TechNet event, freshman Assemblyman Bill Dodd, a Napa County Democrat, received $340. Both Chang and Dodd noted the money was for speech/panel participation.

Some like gifts in keeping with their interests. State Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat referred to as a “deal-making, cigar-smoking” guy in a 2004 L.A. Times profile, disclosed $765 in gifts involving cigars.

Hertzberg, a former speaker of the Assembly, is back in Sacramento after spending 13 years in the private sector.

Some of the financial disclosures are on the quirky side: Kansen Chu, a San Jose Democrat Assembly member, holds a financial interest of between $10,000 and $100,000 in NeuroSky, a company that sells a product that claims to use electrodes on your forehead to interpret brainwave electricity – and, yes, to read your mind.

Like most states, California requires annual disclosure of gifts as well as income and property interests. They are submitted to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission, or FPPC, which also polices alleged violations of the state’s campaign laws.

At the state Assembly level, 18 of the 27 new state Assembly members come from the ranks of city councils. At the upper ranks, five of the 10 new senators are former Assembly members.

Lawmakers with a history of having hands slapped

The FPPC sends warnings to lawmakers who have violated the rules in the form of a public letter. And some taking new offices have already been warned of potential malfeasance.

Jeff Stone received a warning in 2010 about a 2009 vote when he was a supervisor in Riverside County, in which he “may” have violated conflict of interest provisions by awarding funds to a nonprofit that stood to benefit him.

“However, we have determined that an enforcement action for a violation is not warranted, because the funds awarded were restricted and could not be used for administrative costs of your source of income,” the note from the commission stated.

Pan has also received a warning about political behavior when he allegedly received services worth over $500 from a lobbyist who hosted a fundraiser for him in 2012.

Much is made of the staggering wealth of members of Congress, where California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is among the richest senators and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, is noted as the wealthiest among U.S. representatives.

At the state legislator level, wealth is not so easily tracked in California. Filers must note holdings in both real estate and stock ownership, which can indicate in increase in wealth.

Gifts, though, are more readily tracked. In California, the gift limit for 2013-14 was $440 for goods from a single source.

State Attorney General Kamala Harris in her filing for her final year in 2010 as district attorney in San Francisco reported no personal stock holdings. It was her last year before taking her current office and she received $1,869 in gifts, mostly flowers as a departure present.

In the previous year, 2009, she noted that her book, “Smart on Crime,” had earned her between $10,000 and $100,000 in royalties, although the book was released in October.

Book royalties are usually paid on a semi-annual or quarterly basis.

Newsom likes gifts; Harris, not so much

This year, Harris, the leading Democratic nominee in the race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, has more holdings to declare due to her marriage in August to fellow attorney Douglas Emhoff.

Harris’ filing shows holdings in Comcast, Costco, Home Depot, Nike, Verizon and Visa, which she notes were held in Emhoff’s IRA and are held separately. Harris, as the state’s chief law enforcement officer, could potentially oversee activity involving some of those companies.

Her gifts this time around are more modest: just one receipt of flowers, from Fox Entertainment, declared at $101.

The man initially seen as her rival for Boxer’s U.S. Senate seat, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, has for years accepted more lucrative gifts.

In 2010, Newsom’s last year as mayor of San Francisco, he declared $3,512 in gifts, including tickets to the opera, symphony, sporting events and Cirque du Soleil.

Last year, Newsom, who declared in January that he would not run for Senate, reported $3,781 that again included tickets to sporting events, a crystal trophy and a Christofle tray.

Legislative gift-taking eroding public trust

In an effort to stem the damaging headlines, Senate Democrats announced on Thursday their plans to introduce a package of bills to reform the gift rules for elected officials. The proposals include a ban on receiving any gifts from lobbyists, an overall reduction in the annual gift limit from $440 to $200 and an outright prohibition on accepting gifts of spa treatments, golf games and tickets to theme parks, concerts and sporting events.

“There is no question that recent events are testing the public’s faith in how our government does its work,” Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, said at the press conference. “We need to restore the public trust.” Of course, legislative leaders wouldn’t need more laws if they followed the best practices of their colleagues.

In the Assembly, Gatto has set the standard for ethics and transparency. He not only declined all international junkets, but disclosed gifts that even the state’s political watchdog would find unnecessary to report. His disclosure reports even include footnotes. 

Gatto follows spirit and letter of the law

“Giving and receiving small tokens are part of life,” Gatto said. “I try to follow the letter and spirit of the law, and that’s anything over $50.” In explanation of the gift certificate given to his daughter, Gatto said, “The rules are very clear that we have to report anything over $50.” 

Technically, Gatto’s interpretation of the law is correct. According to Fair Political Practices Commission’s instructions for the Form 700, the annual statement of economic interests, elected officials must report “gifts given to members of your immediate family” if the official can “exercise discretion or control over the use or disposition of the gift.” This “control over the use or disposition of the gift” also includes tickets to concerts and sporting events. It explains why Gatto reported tickets to the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl that he gave away to local high school students who had overcome adversity.

For several years, unlike many of his colleagues, Gatto has worked with teachers and administrators and found deserving students to take his spot at the big game.  And don’t think Gatto does it for the positive publicity. He’s been doing it for years and never told the press. The only place you’ll find it: on Gatto’s financial disclosure report, in compliance with state law.

Ethics: Appearance of impropriety

Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who specializes in governmental ethics, said that the issue of elected officials accepting gifts is a balance between what is allowed versus what appears to cross the line of undue influence. “If the laws allows legislators to accept gifts, then is it improper or indecent for them to do so?” she asked. “While some gifts are permissible, it can intuitively feel problematic when our elected lawmakers accept gifts when we all strongly suspect they would not receive those gifts were it not for their official roles, and the power they wield in those roles.”

That appearance of impropriety is exacerbated when lawmakers travel with lobbyists on extravagant junkets to exotic locales. Last year, California lawmakers collected passport stamps from Germany, Switzerland, Cuba, Mexico, Poland, Norway, Taiwan, Israel, China, Armenia, Sweden, Canada and South Korea, much of it on the dime of special interest groups.

“When it comes to traveling and attending conferences, I want our officials to leave the Capitol and learn from others,” Levinson said.  “I don’t necessarily want them to do all of that on the public’s dime. When the conferences look fishy, or the sources of the funds have substantial business before the state, it is certainly fair to ask questions.”

Some legislators have avoided the questions altogether. During the Legislature’s 2013 spring break, while dozens of lawmakers were relaxing in Taiwan, Eastern Europe and Cuba, state Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, fulfilled his monthly Air Force reserve duty. In addition to Lieu, state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, have declined to participate in junkets. And, of course, so did the Legislature’s ethical leader, Mike Gatto. “We are a big state with international implications, but I choose to stay in California,” he said. “My policy is simple: I will travel for limited circumstances but only in California. I am a California official.”

By John Seiler

Campaign finance “reform” always means one thing: attacking the other guy’s funding sources under the guise of “good government.”

That’s happening with a bill by state Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, to reveal so-called “dark money” contributions. This is supposed the end the problem from the last campaign of contributions coming from unknown Arizona donors to California initiatives and Republican candidates. Except that it didn’t take long for the donors to be revealed. And the donors are unlikely to repeat their action because they lost on every campaign.

So it’s another typical California charade of a solution seeking a problem. And get this:

“Working with Fair Political Practices Commission staff, Correa has crafted Senate Bill 27, which would apply existing state campaign disclosure laws to nonprofit donations if the nonprofit is less than two years old, gave more than $500,000 in its first contribution to a California-regulated campaign, or has been giving donations to California campaigns in the last calendar year or four previous years.”

So a state bureaucracy cooperated in making its bureaucratic function more powerful. And the “reform” makes California’s already labyrinthine campaign laws even more complicated. Meaning fewer real people — that is, non-government functionaries or campaign consultants — will get involved in the whole mess. The insular Establishment, which in California now exclusively means Democrats like Correa, gains even more power at the expense of the “little guy.”

And free speech rights overall are reduced.

Welcome to clean government!