Voters in Anaheim Versus the System : Council Gets Directive for Campaign Finance Reform

The Anaheim City Council needed only to look in the mirror at its reflected image to find out whether its city needed campaign finance reform. Instead, in this year of the voter as pundit extraordinaire, it asked for advice. The city’s electorate has replied with a resounding advisory affirmation of the obvious. The council has no excuse now to delay passing an ordinance limiting contributions to its own campaigns.

That may take some getting used to in a city blessed by the sun and that previously didn’t ask too many hard questions about influence-seeking. While its politics were flooded with money, Anaheim even harbored its grand dreams of expansion as recession came on in previously recession-proof Orange County. But the lobbyists who were paying to play knew well by the 1990s the cost of business as usual, for themselves if not for the public. After they had poured money into local campaigns during the boom years, they eventually spoke openly about a system out of control. Even then, the politicians paid lip service to campaign finance reform.

This was the same council that professed astonishment earlier this year when questioned about a longstanding practice of accepting tickets to Disneyland, even as it prepared to make important decisions about a proposed $3-billion expansion of the theme park. Finally after the state Fair Political Practices Commission looked in, city officials agreed to stop brokering free tickets.

That attitude that “contributions don’t influence us” prevailed. Typical was what happened in 1990, when council members said they weren’t affected by campaign contributions as they voted favorably on two hotel complex projects in the same month. Council members received $8,220 in contributions from lobbyists for the development.

This, too, was the council that received $8,800 from Hon Development Corp. in the last half of 1991, at a time the council considered a sensitive project in Coal Canyon. The Department of Fish and Game expressed amazement at the city environmental impact report because it preferred new pavement so unabashedly to preserving rare mountain lions and cypress trees.

The list goes on. Billboard industry efforts to repeal a sensible ban covering the dazzling and distracting signs along freeways were fueled by more than $73,000 in contributions to council and mayoral candidates since the mid-1980s.

For those who have understood and worked the system, there have been rewards. In one instance, two lobbyists who contributed thousands of dollars in political contributions over a five-year period saw the city overrule staff advice and approve the purchase of a parcel of land.

Now, as the recession has set in, Anaheim’s ambitious plans of expansion have been tested. The city may get stuck for $2 million a year for a new sports arena that rises, without tenants, over the Orange Freeway. As belts tightened, even municipal employees threatened by privatization turned to time-tested campaign largess. The usually quiet International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers actually got into the act this year as a major donor to campaigns of council supporters.

The reform voters now want surely will come as a relief for such players, worried about family bills. But not before $2 million of special-interest money flowed to council members’ campaigns since 1984. The city cries, “Enough.”

One prominent Anaheim resident named Jiminy Cricket once recommended himself to young Pinocchio as an “official conscience.” Like the wooden boy, the council would ignore good advice only at its peril.