How easy is it for special interests to buy favors from your city government?
With the Anaheim corruption scandal still roiling — the FBI maintains that former Mayor Harry Sidhu told a witness he hoped for $1 million for his campaign, to be paid by Angels Baseball — the nonprofit Citizens Take Action has issued its first report card grading every O.C. city on the strength of its campaign finance laws and how easy it is for Regular Folk to access information on the cash candidates raise, and from whom, and what they spend it on.
Suffice to say most cities stink.
“Simply put, most cities in Orange County have not taken proactive steps to protect government against undue influence from large individual donors or special interests,” the report concludes.
The majority of Orange County’s 34 bergs — 20 of them! — couldn’t manage to surpass a C.
Eight of them face-planted rather spectacularly with solid Fs: Buena Park, Cypress, Fullerton, La Habra, La Palma, Mission Viejo, Tustin and Villa Park.
There’s a vast, squishy middle, and then seven shining stars with A grades for having sensible contribution limits and easy transparency — Dana Point, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods and Seal Beach.
Laguna Beach scored highest, with 93 of 100 possible points; Mission Viejo scored lowest, with 4 of 100 possible points.
No city got an A-plus. You can see detail on your city’s approach, and recommendations for how to improve it, here.
‘Out-of-town money’
“As a whole, the majority of cities in Orange County scored very low in the area of campaign contribution limits,” said the report, which makes no bones about its point of view: that political money is corrosive and must be reined in.
“Of 34 cities, only 15 have enacted contribution limits on individuals. The remaining 19 cities have a default limit of $4,900, which was put in place through state law in 2021. Considering that many successful candidates at the municipal level spend less than $25,000 in their entire campaign, a default limit of $4,900 is very high, and it can give large donors outsized influence over an election.”
Fourteen cities limit contributions from political action committees, but only three — Laguna Beach, Santa Ana and Yorba Linda — try to squash favor-buying by limiting or prohibiting contributions from businessfolk seeking city contracts, and developers seeking city approval for building projects, the report said.
Only two — Laguna Beach and Yorba Linda — have a limited window for candidates to accept contributions.
The abyss between the As and the Fs is simply created by cities that have passed their own campaign contribution limits, and those that have not, said David Edward Burke, an attorney and founder of Citizens Take Action.
“It seems absurd to me that larger cities like Huntington Beach have a $620 contribution limit, while smaller cities like Cypress or Los Alamitos allow contributions up to $4,900,” he said.
Some low-scoring cities are unrepentant, echoing the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision, which holds that political giving is a matter of free speech and restricting it violates the First Amendment.
Other low-scoring cities have been grappling with the issue and want to act.
“When I look through the amount of out-of-town money and PAC money that comes into San Clemente, it’s disconcerting,” said Mayor Gene James. “Why are people in Newport Beach and Los Angeles so interested in specific candidates in San Clemente?”
San Clemente got a D-minus. Campaign contribution limits — and greater transparency — are on Tuesday’s city council agenda, James said.
Danger
Why should you care?
The fundamental danger posed by big money in politics, Citizens Take Action asserts, is that it buys access and skews government action in favor of powerful interests (a developer’s project, a trash hauler’s contract, perhaps a baseball team’s purchase of a city stadium?). Often, what’s good for the powerful interests is not what’s good for the rest of us.
“This access, coupled with the representative’s awareness that large donors can be the difference between success and failure in the next election, leads many representatives to shift votes and decisions in favor of wealthy donors,” the report says. “That explains why a well-known study found that the chances of a policy being enacted greatly increase as more economic elites and interest groups support the policy, whereas the odds do not significantly increase as more average citizens support the policy.”
It happens at every level of government, of course, but a donation that would be a drop in the ocean at the federal level can be a tsunami at the local level.
Then there’s the transparency thing: It’s easy to look up how much your U.S. Congressfolk haul in (federal campaign finance information is at OpenSecrets.org) and fairly easy to look up how much your state reps haul in (state campaign finance information is in the Secretary of State’s database), but there’s no central clearing house for local information (Fair Political Practices Commission? How ’bout it?).
What’s posted and where varies from city to city, and just try to find that information for Orange County’s scores of special districts!
Best, worst, etc.
How did Anaheim do, you’re wondering?
Somewhat surprisingly, it got a B-minus, which may seem like grade inflation given current events.
“I think that speaks to a couple things,” Burke said. “One is that decent laws on the books don’t mean much if elected officials are breaking them, which shows how important proper oversight and sufficient law enforcement resources aimed at political corruption are.
“Second is that larger cities like Anaheim and Irvine may need to take additional steps that we didn’t emphasize in our report, like publicly financed elections. Maybe Sidhu wouldn’t allegedly have sought half a million in campaign contributions from an Angels representative if he could get four times matching funds for his contributions from individuals.”
Anaheim has a $2,200 limit on campaign contributions by individuals and PACs, but no prohibitions or limits on contributions by those with pending business with the city, or limited fundraising window. It got just 32 of 70 possible points for campaign finance limits.
Contrast that with first-in-class Laguna Beach, which got 60 out of 70 possible points for campaign finance limits.
The scenic seaside city has a strong $440 limit on contributions by individuals and PACs, as well as a ban on contributions from contractors/developers who have, or who have had, business with the city over the preceding 12 months, the report said. Laguna Beach lost some points for not having a defined fundraising window, but got an A.
Dana Point adopted campaign contribution limits more than 30 years ago and regularly adjusts them to reflect the Consumer Price Index. In April, it went from $810 to $880. It got an A.
At the far back of the class was Mission Viejo, with the aforementioned 4 out of 100 possible points.
Mission Viejo hasn’t adopted limits on contributions by individuals or PACs, and has no prohibitions or limits on contributions from prospective city contractors or developers seeking city approvals, the report found. There’s also no limited fundraising window. It got just 2 out of 70 possible points for campaign finance, and 2 out of 30 possible points for the transparency of data. F.
Squishy middle
In that vast squishy middle was San Clemente, with that D-minus. Mayor James was ticked off, but has to agree it’s deserved. It’s hard to find the campaign finance forms on the city’s website, he said, and when you do, you discover they’re PDFs and aren’t searchable.
“We need to be able to search by recipient, by PAC, by contributor, by amount, by date,” James said. “We’re unable to do that right now.”
Citizens United allows unlimited independent expenditures in political races — that is, donations to a candidate can be limited, but donations to an unrelated entity that spends money promoting that candidate cannot be limited — and there’s nothing a little city in Southern California can do about that.
“But what we can do,” James said, “is put them in public notices in the newspaper, can’t we? Those candidates can explain those contributions.”
San Clemente’s discussion on Tuesday promises to be a spirited one.
Lake Forest, meanwhile, snared just 2 out of 70 possible points for contributions, and 28 of 30 possible points for transparency. It got a D.
“The report is heavily weighted toward contribution limits,” noted spokesman Jonathan Volzke, who crowed about its near-perfect transparency score, by email.
“The city sees campaign contributions as a First Amendment issue, and, as the study found, ensures voters have as much information as possible to make their decision.”
In Placentia — D-minus — recent discussions about local contribution limits ended with the city council declining to adopt anything more stringent than the state’s requirements. Officials there found the Citizens Take Action report to be biased and politically motivated.
To that, Burke might gleefully do a mea culpa.
Citizens Take Action aims to pass a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics. In the meantime, Burke hopes to work with Orange County cities to stem the flow of money into local politics and increase transparency.
“In many ways,” the report said, “the success of a political candidate’s campaign depends more on their ability to fundraise than on their ability to govern.” And that’s just not how it’s supposed to work.
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