HUNTINGTON BEACH : Losing Candidates, PACs Settle Lawsuit

Two unsuccessful school board candidates have agreed to a $12,000 settlement in a suit in which they alleged that two political action committees operated by a local teachers union violated state political reporting laws.

Leon E. McKinney and James M. Ball last June alleged that the teacher-union groups failed to observe reporting deadlines in spending more than $25,000 to mail campaign literature supporting two successful candidates in the 1992 Huntington Beach Union High School District board of trustees election.

McKinney said the reporting delays, in effect, concealed from voters that opponents Michael Simons and Bonnie Bruce were supported by teachers’ groups.

Ball, who narrowly lost to Simons, said the disclosure came too late to use as a campaign issue.

“If I would have been able to bring this out at a candidate’s night and if the press had covered it, it conceivably would have put me ahead of” Simons, Ball said.

Simons received 31,849 votes to Ball’s 29,168. McKinney received 21,425. Bruce was an easy winner with about 70,000 votes.

Terms of the settlement approved in court call for $2,500 to go to McKinney and Ball, $2,500 to the state’s general fund and $7,000 for attorney fees and filing costs.

Dan Shepard, chairman of the District Education Assn.’s quality education committee, said Tuesday that the reporting errors were minor and technical and happened because a new committee treasurer was unfamiliar with “an abbreviated set of guidelines from the registrar.”

The committee reported the expenditures as soon as it was notified to do so by the registrar of voters, Shepard said.

Shepard said the legal action was “a nuisance suit” and that the teachers group agreed to settlement terms in order to head off mounting legal costs.

McKinney and Ball said the District Education Assn. was required by the state Political Reform Act to report the expenditures within 24 hours of spending the money. However, the association didn’t file the report until several days later.

McKinney said they each spent about $450 in their campaigns.