Carson’s Use of Newsletter Challenged as Violating Law

Against the advice of the Carson city attorney, the city’s official newsletter twice has displayed prominent front-page pictures of incumbents seeking reelection.

A challenger for a City Council seat labeled the newsletters--which cost the city $7,000 an issue and are sent to each of the city’s 28,000 households--as “blatantly political and self-serving.”

City Atty. Glenn Watson warned council members in a Nov. 16 memo that they could be fined $10,000 for violating a law intended to prevent incumbents from reaping an unfair political advantage. The law, which took effect Jan. 1, bans publicly funded mass mailings that are made on behalf of local officials within 90 days of an election. Violations are misdemeanors.

The incumbents seeking reelection April 12 are Mayor Kay Calas and council members Vera Robles DeWitt and Michael Mitoma.

Advice Ignored

In his memo, Watson advised council members to skip publication of the February and March issues of the newsletter or eliminate any pictures or references to incumbents seeking reelection. But city officials did not take Watson’s advice.

“It appears that I was second-guessed on this one,” Watson said Friday in an interview.

In the February issue, Mitoma and DeWitt appear on the front page, along with other officials, in a group picture honoring the city’s 10 top sales tax producers. In the March issue, Calas, Mitoma and DeWitt are displayed with others at the ground-breaking ceremony for the city’s long-planned Veteran’s Park. In every issue, small, separate pictures of all the city’s officeholders appear on the back page.

“I think the entire newspaper was blatantly political and self-serving,” said Aaron Carter, one of six candidates seeking to unseat Calas, DeWitt and Mitoma.

“People I have talked to say it should have been reported as a political mailing. . . ,” he said, claiming that it gives an unfair advantage to the incumbents. He added that the publication had included articles on the city’s mobile home rental review ordinance, anti-gang task force and community safety that he felt were intended to help the incumbents.

Deputy City Administrator Bill McKown, who is in charge of putting out the newsletter, conceded that people may view it as a boon to incumbents. It “has a political dimension,” he said.

McKown, an appointee of City Administrator Dick Gunnarson, who was picked by Calas, DeWitt and Mitoma last year over the objections of council members Sylvia Muise and Tom Mills, denied he was trying to help the three incumbents.

He added, however, “I think (the administration has) done a lot of positive things, and I think the incumbents would continue that.”

Dismissing Watson’s opinion as too “conservative,” McKown insisted that the city administration is not trying to help the incumbents because “we are not trying to highlight one person over another. We use group pictures.” He also noted that council members had openly suggested the articles to which Carter had objected at council meetings.

Nevertheless, Calas said the use of pictures of incumbents in the face of the city attorney’s contrary recommendation was a mistake.

“I didn’t see the damn thing, and I wouldn’t have OKd it if I had,” she said. “As far as that newsletter going out, I’m sorry it did. . . . I guess I have been lax in my duty there.. . . After this, everyone should see a copy of the newsletter on their desk before it is going to be printed, and we haven’t done that.”

But Muise, a council opponent of Calas, said the mayor should have insisted that the administration follow the city attorney’s guidelines from the beginning. The newsletter began publication in November.

“Doesn’t she read the city attorney’s memos? Give me a break. What a cop out!” said Muise, who is backing Carter in the election.

Muise abstained on the newsletter in September when the three who are now running--Calas, DeWitt and Mitoma--voted to set it up. Mills, the fifth member of the council, voted against it.

“They have three votes to do what they want,” Muise said, referring to her council opponents, “perhaps even going so far as to disagreeing with the legal interpretation of the city attorney.”

Calas added that her backing for the newsletter was not an attempt get free political advertising.

“For $10,000,” she said, referring to the possible fine, “I could get my picture sent out. I would not have a picture there that I look horrible in.”

Mitoma said he did not remember reading the city attorney’s memo and had not yet read the February or March issues. “I am too busy campaigning,” he said, adding that he would query McKown and other staffers involved in the production of the newsletter to find out why they acted against the advice of the city attorney.

“They better have a reason why they did it,” he said. “I will have a discussion with Mr. McKown on Monday. If he has a basis for doing what he did, then fine. I will have to talk to the Fair Political Practices Commission too.”

DeWitt and Mills could not be reached for comment.

City Clerk Helen Kawagoe, however, has already contacted the FPPC, a state agency serving as a watchdog against election abuses and conflicts of interest, about the newsletters. She said she was asked to do so by an individual whom she would not name.

Kawagoe received a reply from the FPPC on Friday, stating that the “commission does not give advice regarding past conduct.” The letter added that the agency is now considering regulations to specify which types of local government mailings are permitted or prohibited. The FPPC meets April 5 to consider four alternative regulations.

McKown said that, in the absence of regulations, he considered that the newsletters were legal, Watson’s memo notwithstanding.

“The city attorney wrote an opinion, which was conservative. . . . I indicated to council that we intended to proceed as we intended because there wasn’t any rule about interpretation . . . Up to this point, there is no interpretation,” he said.

He pointed to a regulation exempting elected state officials from the ban on mass mailings if they appear in a mailing put out by a state agency and said that he considered the newsletter a similar sort of mailing. He added that the FPPC might adopt a similar exemption for mailings by local agencies April 5.

Watson, in response, said, “I don’t agree with him or I wouldn’t have given the advice. I admit it was conservative, but I think this is an area in which a city attorney should be conservative.”

Muise said she did not think it appropriate for McKown to go against Watson’s advice.

“I don’t know what background he has to do so,” she said.