Recall Leaders Term Massive State Complaint Overkill

Two men whose unsuccessful efforts to recall a state senator led to a record-breaking, 404-count complaint filed by the state Fair Political Practices Commission accused the watchdog agency on Wednesday of engaging in prosecutorial overkill.

“In my view, this is tantamount to harassment,” Steve Cicero, one of two defendants, said of the massive FPPC complaint. Also named in the administrative action was former South Bay resident and securities analyst Carl Russell Howard, who, like Cicero, is an FPPC target because he was a treasurer of the defunct group Californians Against Corruption.

The group led the rowdy, nationally watched 1994 campaign that anti-gun control forces launched against then-state Sen. David A. Roberti. The group targeted the Van Nuys Democrat because of his advocacy of legislation to strictly regulate the sale of certain firearms and firearm paraphernalia, including military-style assault weapons. Roberti defeated the recall after spending more than $650,000.

“I’ll become a political prisoner before I will pay the FPPC one red cent,” said Howard, who maintained that FPPC rules infringe on citizens’ rights to participate in the political process. “The main purpose of the FPPC is to make politics a professionals’ game,” he said.

All told, the group and its treasurers could be fined $808,000.

“I wouldn’t say we threw the book at them,” FPPC spokesman Gary Huckaby said. But he noted that the agency does have discretion and reserves the right to take its toughest enforcement actions against those who show contempt for FPPC rules.

“There were 35,000 campaign statements filed with us last year, and this is the worst we have ever seen,” Huckaby said. “What we found here was deliberate defiance.”

According to the Oct. 11 FPPC complaint, the group and its treasurers, Howard and Cicero, repeatedly flouted the state Political Reform Act by failing to fully disclose all required information about the sources of political contributions made to the campaign to oust Roberti.

FPPC chairman Ravi Mehta has said that the commission’s staff maintains that the organization engaged in an “apparent cover-up” to hide the true sources of its financing, which allegedly came from contributors such as the National Rifle Assn. and Gun Owners of California.

Although Cicero is named in the complaint, it is Howard who is identified as the group’s leader. The 39-year-old Howard, a former stockbroker at Smith Barney’s Rolling Hills Estates office, has been out of touch with many of his former political colleagues for nearly a year. Mehta said FPPC investigators told him that Howard had managed to avoid being served with the complaint.

The FPPC’s five-person appointed board would normally reach a decision whether to adopt, modify or reject its staff recommendations at its Nov. 2 meeting. If Howard and Cicero file formal answers to the complaint, however, the commission will take up the matter at another meeting.

Cicero missed his deadline for filing a timely response, and Howard has until Friday to file an answer, Huckaby of the FPPC said. Cicero called the FPPC action overkill because the agency triple-counted many of its charges. For example, instead of filing one count against the group if it failed to adequately identify the address, occupation and employer of a contributor, it filed three.