Donors Shaped Ballot Issues, Lungren Says : Lawsuit: The attorney general accuses the Planning and Conservation League of allowing campaign contributions to influence projects included in initiatives.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren criticized one of the state’s largest environmental organizations Monday for allowing campaign contributions to influence how it shaped several successful ballot measures.

In documents filed in a lawsuit, Lungren said the Planning and Conservation League was able to raise thousands of campaign dollars for a parks initiative in 1988 and a rail transit measure in 1990 by agreeing to include specific projects in the proposals that were favored by large contributors.

The two initiatives were approved by voters and authorized millions of dollars in bonds to be used for park projects and the expansion of mass transit, particularly rail transportation.

“In the context of ballot initiatives, nothing has the potential for corruption, the appearance of corruption or the undermining of citizen’s confidence in government as the bartering of pieces of the initiative in exchange for contributions,” wrote Deputy Atty. Gen. Cyrus J. Rickards.

Lungren made the accusations in response to a lawsuit filed by the league challenging the constitutionality of a new law that prevents proponents of a ballot measure from accepting campaign contributions in exchange for including specific projects in their initiatives.

He said the law, authored by Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), was passed overwhelmingly by the Legislature after it was revealed that Southern Pacific Railroad “had pledged up to $500,000 to the (rail bond initiative) in exchange for a number of projects that would benefit the railroad giant.”

Calling the law vague and overly broad, league officials contend that it limits their constitutional right of free speech and association by dictating what methods they can use to solicit funds.

In an interview, league Executive Director Gerald Meral complained that the attorney general’s portrayal of its fund-raising methods were inaccurate. He said the organization did seek contributions from groups or corporations that favored certain projects, but that was not the sole criterion for including them in the initiatives.

Every project that was included in his initiative, he said, had to meet a primary test: Did it have merit and did it meet a public need?

“I would challenge Mr. Lungren or anyone to show me any of our projects that did not have a substantial overwhelming public benefit,” he said.

For most of its initiatives, Meral said, the organization sought contributions from nonprofit organizations. In 1990, however, it had solicited funds from major corporations.

He said that because the involvement of Southern Pacific became an issue during the campaign for the rail bond initiatives, voters were well aware that the company was one of the major financial underwriters of the proposal.

“These charges were aired extensively to the voters and I think the voters rightly took the attitude that if it was for the public benefit it didn’t matter who was paying for the campaign,” he said.

As a result of the passage of the initiative, Meral said three counties in the Bay Area have been able to acquire Southern Pacific’s Cal-Train, a commuter line that starts in Gilroy and runs to San Francisco.

But in written testimony from Kopp that Lundgren attached to his finding, the senator charged that other projects that involved large contributions were also included in the proposals and were not that visible to the voters. He said one contributor pledged $2,500 to the parks initiative with the proviso that $1 million be included in the proposal for the acquisition of Tecate Cypress Forest of Orange County.

Kopp said he found the practice of linking contributions to projects particularly troublesome because in most instances they involved “massive expenditures of public funds for particular projects.”