Officials in a couple Orange County cities are contemplating tightening the rules on campaign spending that helps get local politicians into office amid the continued fallout of one of the largest corruption scandals in county history.
The debate is taking off in the largest OC city – Anaheim – where the FBI in sworn affidavits last year and independent investigators in a corruption report this year have concluded lobbyists and Disney resort interests essentially run city hall.
It’s also likely going to hit one of the county’s smallest cities – Stanton – which neighbors Anaheim, but has gone untouched by the scandal.
Although the two cities didn’t take any final action, officials mapped out a road on what campaign finance reforms could look like.
Last week, officials in Anaheim – most of whom had their campaigns financially supported by Disney – started to set the stage for a long awaited debate on what campaign finance reform could look like in a city that’s home to “the Happiest Place on Earth.”
[Read: What Should Campaign Finance Reform Look Like in The Happiest Place on Earth?]
Activists and community groups like Orange County Communities for Responsible Development (OCCORD) say it’s one of the only real reform proposals on the table this fall to curb corruption and limit the undue influence of the city’s largest election spender:
Disney.
[Read: Can Anaheim Residents Really Turn Their City Hall Around?]
Residents, activists, volunteers and organizers with OCCORD spent over an hour at last week’s city council meeting urging officials to make changes as well as prioritize transparency and the needs of local families over special interests.
Marisol Ramirez, director of programs for OCCORD, said at the meeting that she grew up in Anaheim neighborhoods without libraries or community centers within walking distance and watched as elected officials prioritized special interest groups over working class families.
“Our city’s campaign finance laws are in dire need of reform and we truly want representatives who are accountable to the people,” she said. “As it stands now, the outsized influence of special interest groups and political action committees have compromised the independence of too many candidates.”
[Read: Will Disney Backed Anaheim Officials Limit Mickey Mouse’s Influence on Local Elections?]
Anaheim Debates Recusal Rules
Some changes have already rolled out at the state since the scandal broke more than a year and a half ago.
A recently amended state law, called the Levine Act, already will soon require city officials to recuse themselves from votes that impact a contributor that has donated $250 to their campaign in the last year.
The state law, which took effect this year, also prohibits elected officials from fundraising from people and businesses if officials voted on items that positively impact them within the past year.
Groups like OCCORD, along with other activists in Santa Ana-based Chispa, are calling for that recusal role to also apply to independent expenditures from political action committees that routinely spend big in local elections.
That political action committee spending usually pays for things like political mailers, digital advertising and polling.
But Craig Steele, an attorney brought on to help the city draft up reforms, said it’s unclear if that would be legal and that it would have to be determined in court.
“Ultimately, it all goes to the United States Supreme Court, and this Supreme Court has ruled pretty definitively about the difference between independent expenditures and direct contributions. I don’t have a great deal of confidence that it would come out one way or the other,” Steele said at the Nov. 28 city council meeting.
Councilwoman Natalie Meeks pushed back against trying to implement the recusal rule for independent expenditures, arguing that special interests could strategically spend to block elected officials from voting on certain policies and proposed laws.
She said officials should keep their hands off independent expenditures.
“People either contributed to my campaign or voted for me because of what I believed in,” Meeks said. “Independent expenditures do have a huge voice in our campaigns, but I think messing with it can create so much more deception and kind of gaming the system.”
Meeks received over half a million dollars in campaign support from Disney’s chief political spending arm – the Support Our Anaheim Resort political action committee – in last year’s election.
Mayor Ashleigh Aitken said residents have lost trust in the city’s election process during the continued fallout of the corruption scandal and that the state’s changes to the Levine Act will help address it.
“A lot of this feeling of disenfranchisement from the community also stems from voter confusion. People get a lot of mail, they get text messages, they get robocalls. They’re not quite sure who it’s from and who’s paying for it,” she said.
Aitken suggested that election mailers, text messages, transcripts of robocalls and other election materials paid for my political action committees be uploaded to the city website along with a disclosure of who the committee’s biggest funders are.
Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs the Voice of OC’s Board of Directors.
Will Stanton Make Changes of Their Own?
Last Tuesday, a similar debate took place in Stanton at the request of City Councilman Gary Taylor who called for the city to consider changes of their own and potentially make tighter rules than the state at a future meeting.
Mayor David Shawver said that tightening individual contribution limits gives political action committees the advantage.
“If you limit the amount of money that individuals can put into that, then you’re taking away and giving the advantage to the PACs,” Shawver said.
Councilman Donald Torres said under the current rules there is no way a council member could compete against a political action committee.
“It’s just impossible,” he said.
Councilwoman Hong Alyce Van said there is another approach the city could take is creating greater transparency around political action committee spending and making disclosure forms more easily accessible – an idea that was also floated in Anaheim that same night.
“We can’t control how much money PACs spend, it’s their First Amendment right. However, we can control whether or not we publicize PAC spending,” she said.
“That’s something we can definitely strengthen so that there’s more transparency, there’s more accountability.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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