Giving Is Mutual for Supervisors, Unions : Contributions: O.C. workers give generously to their bosses, who dole out raises. It’s legal. Is it a conflict?

Suppose that you and your co-workers give the boss a couple thousand dollars every few months, just because you like him. And suppose that every year he gives you all a raise.

Would company stockholders believe you earned those raises? Or might they suspect that you got them because you were so generous with the boss?

Far from being hypothetical, those questions neatly describe a relationship that unites the Orange County Board of Supervisors and their 16,000 employees: Year after year, organizations representing those employees pump thousands of dollars into the reelection campaigns of their members’ bosses, the Board of Supervisors. And in contract after contract, the supervisors dole out raises to their workers.

The exchange is lucrative for the supervisors. A Times Orange County Edition computer analysis of 14 years of supervisorial fund raising shows that the five supervisors now in office have received $121,952 from associations representing their workers. And yet, none has ever had to abstain from a contract vote. That is because worker organizations that make contributions are treated like political action committees under the county campaign law--which requires board members to abstain from issues involving their major contributors but makes no reference to PACs or unions.

Board members have approved worker salary increases of about 4.75% a year since 1985. County employees now pocket more than $500 million a year in salaries and benefits.

At a time when supervisors are slashing millions of dollars from indigent health care, social service programs and planned capital-improvement projects, county workers--a diverse collection of employees including clerical staff, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, janitors, attorneys and others--receive the largest single slice of budget pie. And although the threat arises almost every year, there have been no major layoffs in at least half a decade.

To county employee organizations, the campaign gifts represent a way of letting their members participate effectively in local politics and back the candidates they support. In fact, employee groups at all levels of government often are major contributors to the campaigns of elected officials; in Orange County, the practice goes back years, though it has never before been comprehensively studied.

Campaign reform advocates worry that the union money, which has grown markedly in recent years, undermines the Orange County supervisors’ credibility when they consider contract matters, since it means they are voting on issues that materially affect their major contributors.

“There’s a conflict there,” said Lisa Foster, executive director of California Common Cause, a leading campaign reform organization. “The union gives for a reason, and that’s to influence decisions. If the board votes after taking those contributions, that’s a conflict.”

Foster’s opinion is echoed by other campaign reform advocates--from county officials to business leaders to local activists--some of whom worry that the contributions give the supervisors an incentive to curry favor with their workers.

As critics of the contributions and supervisorial actions note, tough, arm’s-length salary negotiations are in the interest of taxpayers, who benefit by the county striking a hard but fair bargain on salaries and benefits. But tough negotiations imply that adversaries, albeit friendly ones, sit on opposite sides of the bargaining table.

When the supervisors take thousands of dollars in contributions from the employee associations, can they be counted on to hold their place in that negotiating process? Or do they, as some suggest, become at least partly dependent on their workers for their political survival?

“I don’t think that’s a legitimate concern,” said Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez. “Obviously, county counsel has decided that this is not a conflict. . . . The Orange County Employees Assn. represents people who are residents of this county, employees with a very broad cross-section of interests.”

Moreover, as Vasquez and other officials point out, supervisors do not get involved in day-to-day negotiations with union representatives. That task falls to county employee relations and personnel officials, though supervisors have the final say on any contract agreement.

Supervisors and others also note that the refusal to lay off workers does not mean that Orange County government is overstaffed. In fact, the county government has one of the nation’s leanest work forces: A 1989 survey found that Orange County had the nation’s fourth-largest county budget in terms of general fund revenue but ranked 41st in employees per capita.

Representatives of several Orange County employee associations say they make contributions for a variety of reasons, but they stress that getting a break on salary negotiations is not one of them. Access to public officials, belief in good government and support for specific public projects--transportation and public-safety improvements, for instance--are some of the reasons they cite.

“It gives the employees the ear of the particular politician,” said John H. Sawyer, general manager of the Orange County Employees Assn., which represents more than 10,000 county workers, including clerical staff, community-service workers, court clerks and supervisors. “They can do more as a group than they can as individuals. . . . The problem for employees is that none of them have very much money. How can they go up against a big corporation” in competing for a politician’s attention? he said.

Moreover, Sawyer contends, employees contribute because they like and respect the supervisors.

He acknowledges, however, that questions inevitably arise when workers and their bosses share a cozy financial relationship. “I see the potential problem, absolutely,” he said. “But that’s kind of the way the world works. You know what (late former state Treasurer and Assembly Speaker) Jesse Unruh said: ‘Money is the mother’s milk of politics.’ ”

Like Vasquez, other supervisors stress that county counsel, which acts as the board’s legal adviser, has cleared them to participate in contract votes despite the contributions. In most cases where so-called “major campaign contributors” bring matters to the board, supervisors who have received large contributions are required to abstain under TINCUP, the county campaign law.

It’s different with unions. Like other political action committees, they are special-interest organizations that raise money from their members and dole it out to political candidates. Because the TINCUP law never mentions PACs or union committees, their brand of giving is not covered.

So when board members receive large contributions from a union or a PAC, they are not required to abstain from votes that might benefit that group. If the same contributions came from a company or an individual, the supervisor would have to abstain or face the possibility of criminal prosecution.

What that means is that a union that represents county employees--the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, for instance--can be labeled a “major campaign contributor” under the county law. But that designation does not affect matters that concern the membership of the union, only those that affect the union as a corporate entity.

“Say the union owned a building, and they were applying for a use permit,” explained Deputy County Counsel James F. Meade. “The board members who had received more than the ($1,944) TINCUP limit from that union would be obligated to abstain.”

The same would apply to a corporate PAC. If a developer-sponsored PAC makes large contributions to the supervisors, the board members do not have to abstain from that developer’s projects. But if the PAC itself were to submit a proposal--say it had its own headquarters and wanted permission to add parking spaces--the supervisors who received the PAC contributions would have to step aside.

When the issue is a salary increase for the union’s members, the supervisors are given the green light: The contributions are legal, and so are the board’s votes on salary matters.

That’s enough to clear the legal hurdles, but some observers still wonder whether the practice is healthy. Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, for instance, conceded in an interview that it’s difficult to explain how supervisors can continue to vote on those contracts as long as they are receiving large contributions from employee unions.

“I think you could probably make the argument that it might be a conflict,” Stanton said. “It’s probably an unresolved issue of opinion as to whether it’s any more or less of a conflict than a builder giving over TINCUP.”

But while most individual builders keep their contributions within TINCUP limits, many worker associations give far in excess.

In 1988 and 1989, county unions doled out $47,075 to the five members of the Board of Supervisors. In meetings during the second half of 1989, the supervisors voted to approve contracts for most of their employees.

Although attendance varied at the meetings, no supervisors either abstained or cast a dissenting vote.

“I believe that the members of the board would look much better to the public if they did not accept such large sums from employees whose pay scale they approve,” said Shirley L. Grindle, a former county planning commissioner who monitors TINCUP. “You’d think they’d want that.”

But deciding to forgo those contributions could have a dramatic effect on county politics. Because the contributions are so large, they have helped to make incumbents nearly invincible by scaring off potential challengers or by overwhelming those who make a run for office.

Take the case of Westminster Councilwoman Joy L. Neugebauer, who ran a spirited but unsuccessful campaign to unseat Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder last year.

Neugebauer’s campaign was hampered from the start by a huge fund-raising disadvantage, and Wieder’s war chest was stocked with large contributions from local unions.

In 1989 and 1990, employee associations representing firefighters and other county employees contributed $31,950 to Wieder’s reelection campaign. Those contributions alone were more than Neugebauer raised from all sources combined.

Neugebauer received no money from unions.

“It was awfully discouraging,” Neugebauer said after the campaign. “You go up against so much money that it’s hard to get your message out.”

Neugebauer’s case is hardly exceptional: In the 14 years of campaign records reviewed by The Times, county employee unions recorded exactly one contribution to a supervisorial challenger--$500 to Bruce Nestande, who was running against a wildly unpopular incumbent appointed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown.

Despite the record, union officials insist that they do not specifically target incumbents for their contributions.

Dallas Jones, president of the International Assn. of Firefighters Local 1014, said that union has a committee responsible for interviewing candidates and deciding who deserves its contributions.

“We really go by the issues and by the candidates,” he said. “We’re all consumers, and our members have an interest in good government, and we contribute accordingly.”

Contribute they do. The firefighters union, which is based in Los Angeles but represents Orange County Fire Department workers as well, is the biggest union contributor of all Orange County employee groups and the biggest special-interest contributor during the past 14 years.

Since early 1987, the firefighters union has contributed $41,950 to the five county supervisors. Of that, $16,000 has gone to Wieder alone.

Wieder’s press aide, Kathleen Campini, said the supervisor does not know the precise reason for the firefighters’ generosity.

“She’s been very supportive of public safety,” Campini said. “That or fireworks, which she’s opposed.”

Still, Jones said, “we don’t see any conflict whatsoever” in the supervisors voting on salary and benefit issues for the firefighters represented by that union.

“We’re talking about contributions of less than $25 per individual,” Jones said. “The contributions, we believe, help the supervisors get their message out. . . . If we were to do anything different, we would be shutting ourselves out of the process.”

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum provided the computer research for this report, with clerical assistance from Darren Tass.

TRACKING THIS SERIES

* SUNDAY: The impact that unregulated political action committees have had on campaign contributions to the Board of Supervisors.

* TODAY: County employee unions give thousands to the supervisors, who dole out millions in taxpayer-funded salaries.

* TUESDAY: The transfer technique lets money given to one politician find its way to another.

* WEDNESDAY: How a lobbyist uses a PAC to give thousands to supervisors, who then weigh the fate of his clients.

* THURSDAY: Companies with their own PACs give at will and still stay within the law.

* FRIDAY: Reformers and supervisors agree that the law is broken but disagree over how to fix it.

HOW THIS INVESTIGATION WAS CONDUCTED

Figures for this Dollar Politics series were developed during a four-month Times Orange County Edition investigation that used a computer to categorize 14 years of contributions to candidates for the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The period was selected to begin just before the county’s political reform law, TINCUP, was passed in 1978.

Using disclosure statements that candidates are required to file with the Orange County registrar of voters, the study identified 19,150 contributions made to either challengers or incumbents from all sources, including individuals, corporations, political action committees and other groups. Candidates are required to itemize contributions of $100 or more.

The information was edited to correct typographical errors, remove duplicate entries and confirm links between related organizations and contributors that had gone by different names during the study period. Where any links were unclear, those contributions were not categorized, so in some cases the findings are deliberately understated.

The results have also been checked against other government-maintained data, including the registrar’s separate list of major campaign contributors and the state’s list of registered political action committees. The computer research was performed by staff writer Mark Landsbaum, while staff writer Jim Newton reported and wrote the stories.

How a PAC Works:

County Employee Associations

County workers donate to the political funds of the worker organizations that represent them. The organizations then give contributions to members of the Board of Supervisors, who approve employee contracts. Below are three of the most politically active:

County Employees:

Firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and most other employees

Their PACs:

Firefighter’s Union, sheriff’s deputies union, Orange County Employees Assn.

Thomas F. Riley

Firefighters: $7,500

Sheriff’s deputies: $5,000

O.C. employees: $0

Don R. Roth

Firefighters: $1,250

Sheriff’s deputies: $4,050

O.C. employees: $1,250

Roger R. Stanton

Firefighters: $2,500

Sheriff’s deputies: $5,500

O.C. employees: $0

Gaddi H. Vasquez

Firefighters: $0

Sheriff’s deputies: $500

O.C. employees: $2,500

Harriett M. Wieder

Firefighters: $1,000

Sheriff’s deputies: $2,500

O.C. employees: $1,250

1989 Board Action on Contracts:

July 12, 1989:

Supervisors adopt salary and benefits agreements with Orange County Employees Association, largest of all county worker organizations (Wieder and Roth absent).

Aug. 30, 1989

Supervisors adopt salary and benefits agreements with firefighters, Local 1014, which represents 650 firefighter, paramedics, others.

Nov. 29, 1989:

Supervisors adopt salary and benefits agreements with Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, which represents 1,300 deputies and district attorney employees (Wieder absent).

Note: Only 1988 and 1989 contributions prior to contract votes are included.

Source: Campaign disclosure statements, Board of Supervisors’ minutes.

Contributions to Orange County Supervisors From County Employee Groups

Total contributions, 1977-90

Thomas F. Riley: $19,478

Number of contributions: 11

Don R. Roth: $30,275

Number of contributions: 16

Roger R. Stanton: $21,900

Number of contributions: 18

Gaddi H. Vasquez: $12,700

Number of contributions: 11

Harriet M. Weider: $37,599

Number of contributions: 23

Note: Combines all contributions from employee organizations that rpresent Orange County workers in contract negotiations.

Source: Campaign disclosure statements

County Employee Groups Who they represent, what they have contributed, 1977-90 Organization: International Assn. of Firefighters Employees Represented: 650 firefighters, paramedics, captains and apparatus engineers Contributions: $68,299 Organization: Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs Employees Represented: 1,300 sheriff and district attorney employees Contributions: $44,700 Organization: Orange County Employees Assn. Employees Represented: 10,233 workers of all types represented in various bargaining units Contributions: $35,928 Organization: Service Employees International Union Employees Represented: 425 mechanics, custodians, truck drivers, maintenance workers, others Contributions: $4,025 Organization: Orange County Attorneys Assn. Employees Represented: 330 deputy district attorneys, county counsels, public defenders Contributions: $3,200 Organization: American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Employees Represented: About 1,000 eligibility workers, who work with welfare applicants Contributions: $2,850 Organization: International Union of Operating Engineers Employees Represented: 200 maintenance workers Contributions: $2,075 Organization: Orange County Fire Dept. Chief Officers Assn. Employees Represented: 31 fire battalion and division chiefs Contributions: NONE TOTAL: $161,077 Source: Employee groups, county personnel department, campaign disclosure statements