Dannemeyer Staffer Faces Fine Over ’88 AIDS Initiative : Politics: Administrative law judge recommends $10,000 FPPC penalty against a doctor’s group that did not file required reports. The organization has disbanded, so its treasurer may be liable.

An administrative law judge has recommended that a doctors’ group backed by Orange County Rep. William E. Dannemeyer be fined $10,000 for “gross negligence” while campaigning for a 1988 initiative that would have required public reporting of AIDS tests.

The Fair Political Practices Commission will consider that recommendation next week.

The judge, John D. Wagner, recommended the fine after finding that the now-defunct California Physicians for a Logical AIDS Response, and Brett Barbre, its former treasurer, were guilty of negligence for not complying with state disclosure laws, which require campaigns to file regular spending and contribution reports.

Barbre--a Dannemeyer staff member who coordinated the group’s activities from the congressman’s Fullerton campaign headquarters--could be liable for the full fine since the committee no longer exists.

The doctors’ group was established to support Prop. 102, which was written by Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and tax crusader Paul Gann, who later died of complications from AIDS that he contracted through a blood transfusion.

Rejected by voters, the controversial measure would have stripped confidentiality from AIDS testing, authorized public reporting and investigations into the sexual histories of those whose illnesses were diagnosed as AIDS, and rescinded state law forbidding discrimination in employment or insurance because of the disease.

During the hotly contested ballot campaign, the doctors’ group received $160,517 in donations--mostly from physicians--and spent $97,806 to produce and mail literature on behalf of the AIDS reporting measure, according to FPPC documents.

But the group never filed public campaign reports during the campaign--a fact that prompted AIDS activist Bruce Decker and Assemblyman Johan Klehs (D-Castro Valley) to file a complaint with the FPPC a month before the November vote.

Decker said at the time that the group refused to file in an effort to conceal its financial backing, which he said included more than $20,000 in loans from Dannemeyer.

The FPPC investigated the charges and, failing to reach a settlement with Barbre, requested a hearing before Judge Wagner in Sacramento last December.

Wagner found that the committee and Barbre failed to file the necessary “statement of organization” for the group or submit the required public spending documents during six subsequent reporting periods. In a decision dated Jan. 25, he ruled that the committee and Barbre should be fined $10,000--a recommendation that will be forwarded to FPPC commissioners for consideration in private session on Thursday.

While the commissioners could adopt the judge’s decision, their enforcement division has recommended in writing that the fine be increased to $13,000 because the group’s failure to file posed “very serious harm to the public.”

It also said that Dannemeyer spokesman Barbre “was untruthful in his dealings with the FPPC” during the agency’s investigation.

Reached Friday, Barbre declined to comment on that allegation and said he’s not sure if he will appeal the recommended fine. “Certainly, I’m not entirely pleased, but it’s just another round,” he said.

Although Barbre said his boss donated space in the Fullerton campaign headquarters for the group, he said the doctors’ committee was “organized separately, entirely from Mr. Dannemeyer.”

But Decker, who filed the original complaint, accused the outspoken conservative congressman of “hiding behind a bogus committee and . . . installing his press secretary as its treasurer.”