County Needs to Fill TIN CUP’s Loopholes

The dispute over two political campaign contributions to Supervisor Harriett Wieder has again focused attention on the need to close some loopholes in Orange County’s TIN CUP (Time Is Now, Clean Up Politics) campaign reform ordinance.

The ordinance prohibits a supervisor from voting on issues affecting major campaign contributors, which under today’s maximum is anyone who gave the supervisor more than $1,739 in the last four years.

Problem: The ordinance doesn’t make it clear that campaign contributions from a company’s majority owner should be considered the same as a contribution from the company. That’s a loophole that at least two grand juries and the district attorney’s office have urged be closed. And it should be.

That shortcoming in the law came up again Thursday when Shirley Grindle, who helped draft the original ordinance in 1979, charged in a complaint to the district attorney that Wieder and builders James and Alfred Baldwin violated TIN CUP when Wieder accepted $4,000--$1,000 each from the brothers and their wives--and later voted on an issue affecting their development company.

The other back door is that TIN CUP doesn’t cover money given by political action committees. Grindle again raised the issue of PAC contributions Monday in a complaint to the district attorney over a $2,500 contribution from the Irvine Co. Employees Political Action Committee to Wieder’s congressional campaign.

Grindle says that the Irvine Co. and Wieder, who voted on Irvine Co. land-use issues before the board, both violated the ordinance. She claims the company and its employee PAC are indistinguishable from each other because top company officials contribute most of the money and decide which candidates will get it. The Irvine Co. disagrees.

We don’t know whether the letter of the law has been violated in these cases. The district attorney, and maybe eventually a judge, will decide that. But there is little doubt that the law’s spirit is being compromised.

Money from special groups made up mostly of company executives can influence votes as much as company donations can. That’s something the supervisors should correct by including PACs in the TIN CUP ordinance, regardless of what the district attorney does about the pending complaints.

And the district attorney’s office must more zealously monitor the campaign reform ordinance and enforce it vigorously.

The county board can’t be relied on to do so, and the responsibility to the public shouldn’t continue to fall on one person, Grindle, who led the drive for TIN CUP nine years ago and has been the law’s lone watchdog ever since.