Dump Ineffective Donor Restrictions : * County Needs Stricter Campaign Contribution Laws

Two indisputable facts: Trash hauling is a highly competitive big business in Orange County, and candidates need ever-increasing amounts of cash to run campaigns. Add these together and it should come as no surprise that the garbage industry is a consistent source of campaign contributions to city council and county supervisor candidates--especially incumbents.

Is this association in the best interest of the public, which must count on elected officials to regulate trash rates and award franchises? The answer clearly is no. Strict limitations on campaign contribution--stronger ones than are now on the books within Orange County--are in order.

The Board of Supervisors should adopt rules to prohibit candidates for the board from accepting campaign contributions from all county contractors--whether they provide garbage removal, cable TV or any other service that the county regulates. Similar rules should be adopted by all 31 of the county’s cities.

As indicated by last week’s Times articles on the garbage business in Orange County, candidates for the Board of Supervisors received nearly $200,000 in political contributions from the industry over 15 years. Nor have city council candidates hesitated to tap this source. In Anaheim, for example, where Taormina Industries Inc. has dominated the commercial trash-hauling business for more than 40 years and where that company now has the city’s residential contract, the chairman of the company’s board, William C. Taormina, has contributed nearly $73,000 to City Council candidates since 1984. That’s more than any other single donor in the city, including the Walt Disney Co. Although the contributions were legal, the pattern of giving undermines public confidence in the ability of elected officials to regulate garbage franchises and set collection rates. A few contributors openly admitted that they hoped the contributions would at least gain them “access” to government officials. Ask the politicians who receive the contributions, however, and, almost to a person, they see no potential for conflict of interest.

On the Board of Supervisors, for example, members say that the current campaign limits, which prohibit them from voting on an issue affecting a contributor who has given more than $1,944 during a four-year period, are adequate. (A proposed county campaign law to be voted on in June would limit contributions to supervisors to $1,000 per election cycle. That would be an improvement.) Elected municipal officials are governed by state laws requiring full disclosure of contributors. In addition, some individual cities, among them five in Orange County, have contribution limits that range from $100 to $500 per candidate per election.

Campaign reformers assert that, when awarding franchises and setting service rates, city councils and boards of supervisors are in fact acting as regulatory rather than legislative bodies. That means every effort must be made to ensure that decisions are made free from influence.

On the state level, the California Political Reform Act prohibits members of regulatory agencies such as the Public Utilities Commission and the Coastal Commission from voting on matters that involve a contributor who has given them $250 or more during the previous year.

A few government agencies, including the cities of Gardena in Los Angeles County, Poway in San Diego County and South San Francisco in Northern California, bar government contractors from making contributions altogether. That’s what Orange County should do.