Bill Assailed as Ploy to Cancel Senator’s Debt

A public interest group urged Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday to veto a bill it says is aimed at helping Republican state Sen. Frank Hill of Whittier avoid paying a $102,500 campaign debt.

The bill, pushed through the Legislature in the final hectic days of the just-concluded session, would make it more difficult to hold office seekers personally liable for debts incurred by their campaigns.

In a letter to the governor, California Common Cause said the bill “represents an abuse of legislative power.”

“If a candidate is not responsible for unpaid bills, who is?” wrote the group’s lobbyist, Kim Alexander.

Common Cause charged that the bill failed to receive adequate public scrutiny, noting that it was rushed through the Legislature as an urgency measure with hundreds of other bills in the last two weeks of the session.

As an urgency measure, the bill would become law immediately upon Wilson’s signature. Deputy press secretary J.P. Tremblay said the governor has not been briefed on the measure and has no position on it.

Hill is under a federal grand jury indictment in a separate case in which he is charged with extortion, conspiracy and money laundering as a result of the long-running FBI investigation of corruption in the state Capitol. He has pleaded not guilty.

Hill and the bill’s author, Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-Placentia), Hill’s longtime friend, deny that the proposal is intended to help Hill by undercutting a Sacramento Superior Court case filed by a campaign firm that helped Hill win election to the Senate in 1990.

“I don’t think it affects the lawsuit we have at hand,” Hill said Monday. “I didn’t ask Ross to carry the bill.”

But Alexander told the governor in her letter: “Frankly, we find it hard to believe that Assembly member Johnson was not aware of the fact that his close friend, Senator Hill, was ordered by a court to pay $102,500 out of his own pocket to a campaign vendor.”

In the lawsuit, Dutra Communications of Sacramento claimed that Hill and his campaign operatives owe the company $88,000. Last year, the court said Dutra was likely to win the case and directed an attachment against Hill’s personal assets.

The case went to an arbitrator, who ruled in favor of Dutra for $102,500, including interest, and held the senator personally liable for payment. Hill appealed and the issue is expected to go to trial.

The arbitrator accepted Dutra’s contention that Hill was personally liable for the debt because Hill controlled his campaign committee and was the beneficiary of its activities.

Under Johnson’s bill, a candidate’s responsibility for campaign debts would be restricted to those in which the office seeker had agreed in writing or verbally to be held personally liable.

Dutra’s attorney, Glenn W. Peterson, claimed that the measure would change the rules and blow a “huge hole” in his case at the trial.

Although Johnson was not available Monday, he earlier had insisted that his bill merely recast existing law without making a substantive change.

He said it was unfair to hold the office seeker personally responsible for campaign debts over which he or she had no knowledge or control.

Johnson said he knew of no court cases that would be impacted by the bill. He said he carried it because even the threat of such a lawsuit could discourage candidates from running.

But Alexander told the governor that if the bill was “simply declaratory of existing law, then the courts would not have had legal grounds upon which to order Sen. Hill to pay Dutra Communications $102,500.”