Torrance PAC Pays $300 Fine for Failing to Report Finances

A small Torrance political action committee has paid a $300 city fine for failing to file campaign finance reports, but leaders of the group say they believe the City Clerk should have notified them of the filing rules.

Frank Rizzardi, treasurer of the Protect Our Property Committee, said he paid the fine last week.

“I told them we were paying it with great reluctance,” Rizzardi said.

“We paid the $300 because we have not been notified of an appeal process, and, second, we don’t have the money to hire an attorney.”

Rizzardi said the group is “a small political action committee. We’ve never had any more than $800 or $900 in the treasury.”

City Councilman Bill Applegate complained this spring that he could not find any city records on Protect Our Property, which had excluded his name from an endorsement letter issued during the city March election campaign. The city clerk’s office, after a review, concluded the group had last filed a report in 1986.

City Clerk John A. Bramhall notified the group last month that although he was assessing a $2,859 fine, he would suspend all but $300.

Rizzardi and Joseph Arciuch, the group’s chairman, said they believe the city clerk’s office should have informed them of state rules requiring political action committees to file regular reports.

“We didn’t know we should have filed that report,” Arciuch said. Rizzardi has said in the past that the group believed it needed to file statements only if it donated $500 or more to a single candidate.