Despite Rumors, No School Districts Gave Campaign Funds to Ferguson

Two curious items appeared on one of Assemblyman Gil Ferguson’s campaign spending reports.

If anyone noticed anything unusual about them, nothing public was said.

But in recent months the two items have become the subject of political whispers in Orange County. Did you know that the Newport Beach Republican’s 1986 campaign spending reports show two donations from public school districts? the voices said. How can school districts make political donations?

The whispers turned out to have a basis in fact. But an investigation by the Orange County Department of Education has determined that no actual donations were involved and that nothing illegal transpired.

Talk of the so-called donations began during the bitter GOP primary campaign in which Newport Beach Councilwoman Evelyn R. Hart tried unsuccessfully to unseat Ferguson. An anonymous critic of Ferguson urged newsmen to look into the donations. Hart did not mention the mysterious donations herself, however, and they did not become a campaign issue.

But several people continued to question the “school district donations” privately, weeks after Ferguson defeated Hart in the June 7 primary.

The questions came, critics said, because at face value Ferguson’s reports showed him accepting campaign money from Orange Unified School District and a vocational training district, the North Orange County Regional Occupational Program. Ferguson’s records for 1986 listed a $600 donation from Orange Unified and a $230 donation from North Orange County ROP.

The two items are listed in Ferguson’s 1986 report under “monetary contributions received.”

If the two items were campaign contributions, serious legal questions could be raised. California law prohibits a tax-supported entity, such as a school district, from making donations to a political campaign.

But it turns out that neither Orange Unified nor North Orange County ROP donated money to the assemblyman.

“Those weren’t donations,” Ferguson said. “It was money for a conference for high school students I sponsored in 1985. We paid the major part of it with my campaign funds, but students paid $10 each.”

Ferguson said the money from the students went back into his political campaign kitty to partially reimburse it for money spent on the conference. Most of the 162 students who took part in the conference paid by individual checks, Ferguson said. But two school districts paid for their participants with a single check. Orange Unified had 60 students and North Orange County ROP had 23.

State law requires disclosure of campaign contributions of more than $100. So Ferguson said he and his campaign staff decided that the two checks must be recorded. The checks were not donations, Ferguson emphasized. But he said he didn’t know where else on the state forms to disclose the reimbursements to his campaign fund.

“It was my first term (as an assemblyman), and I made some mistakes trying to figure those forms out,” Ferguson said.

Fred Koch, deputy superintendent of the Orange County Department of Education, was among those notified of the alleged donations. Koch said he investigated the circumstances because the county Department of Education oversees expenditures by all local school districts.

Koch learned that the two checks were not actual campaign donations, and no further action was required, he said.

Wrong Form

According to Sandra Michioku, spokeswoman for the state Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento, checks that are not donations should be disclosed on a form for miscellaneous income.

“It would appear to be a technical violation” of reporting procedures, she said. But she noted that the money was clearly reported--only not on the proper form.

“The aim of these statements is for the disclosure of campaign finance, and the money appears to be disclosed,” Michioku said.

The Fair Political Practices Commission confirmed in January that it is investigating a separate accusation made against Ferguson in 1987. Slow-growth advocate John Gardner of Newport Beach alleged that Ferguson secretly funneled unreported campaign services or contributions to Costa Mesa City Council candidates in 1986.

Ferguson has denied the charge. He has also expressed impatience with the time the commission is taking before reporting the findings of its nearly seven-month investigation.

Michioku said the investigation “is still ongoing.” She said she could not elaborate.

Educators Surprised

Officials in Orange Unified and North Orange County ROP expressed surprise last week when they learned that their school districts are officially listed as being campaign donors to Ferguson.

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” said Roger Duthoy, assistant superintendent of Orange Unified. “It was not a campaign contribution. It was to send kids to a conference to discuss issues of government and those kinds of things. As I recall, we sent 60 kids at $10 a person. I think we had 15 kids per school, as we have four high schools. . . . It was absolutely not a contribution to a campaign fund.”

Patricia Langlin, director of program development for North Orange County ROP, said she was surprised to learn that the $230 check sent by her district wound up being reported on a campaign donation form.

“The sending of our money was for a legitimate reason. It was for a conference for students,” she said.

The 1985 conference, “Looking Forward,” and was held at the Irvine Marriott. According to records kept by Ferguson’s staff, it cost $5,248. The fees paid by the students covered $1,620 of the cost, and corporate donors gave $740. Ferguson’s campaign fund paid for the remaining $2,888.

State law allows campaign funds to be used “for governmental, legislative or political purposes,” a spokesman in the state attorney general’s office said. Because information about government was a central theme of the student conference, the spokesman said, Ferguson’s use of the campaign funds seems to be allowed under the law.

Ferguson sponsored a similar student conference in 1987.

“We have them in the odd-numbered years,” he said. Seminar topics included drug and alcohol abuse, career choices, time management and financial planning.