Complaints Filed in Anaheim Council Election

An independent prosecutor appointed by the city to investigate alleged wrongdoing in last fall’s City Council election has charged former Councilman Frank Feldhaus and a political action committee with breaching state and local campaign contribution laws.

The misdemeanor complaints filed by prosecutor Ravi Mehta include charges that Feldhaus delayed reporting $6,000 in contributions received late in the campaign and that the Anaheim Firefighters Assn.’s PAC delayed reporting more than $14,000 in contributions to Feldhaus and to council member Shirley McCracken.

All of the contributions were later reported on campaign disclosure forms.

Feldhaus decried the complaint against him as pure politics.

“I think they’re just grasping at straws,” he said Wednesday.

Officials of the firefighters PAC would not comment on the charges, filed in Municipal Court in Fullerton.

The charges against Feldhaus and three officials of the PAC were filed last Friday, about two months after City Atty. Jack L. White claimed a conservative political group financed largely by gaming interests made $32,000 in illegal contributions in the council race.

Those contributions, each ranging from $5,000 to $15,000, were reported months after the election and, according to White, may violate a city ordinance limiting individual donations to candidates and political committees to $1,000.

After those misdemeanor charges were filed with the court, political conservatives on the council cried foul, saying White had moved against candidates supported by Republicans without investigating Democrats on the technically nonpartisan council.

White said he only filed charges against the conservative group because the alleged violations were brought to his attention.

“I don’t go out and rifle through campaign reports on my own or independently act as policeman or investigator,” White said. “I act after an allegation has been made. Anything more is not the city attorney’s job, in my view.”

The outcry led to the appointment of Mehta, the former chairman of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, to investigate and prosecute all allegations of wrongdoing during the campaign. The appointment was made in September after a more than four-hour debate by the deeply divided council.

Mehta said Wednesday he is doing a “thorough investigation of everything related to the 1996 election.” He said he is likely to file complaints against other elected officials and PACs in coming weeks.

“I don’t want to get into the politics of this,” Mehta said. “I just want to go in there as a special prosecutor and say, ‘Well, I’ve looked at these issues, and this is what I find.’ ”

Mehta has the legal authority to file criminal charges related to the 1996 election campaign. Under a contract still to be signed, the city will pay Mehta a yet to be determined fee for his services.

Mehta left his state post earlier this year. Critics had called for his resignation after Mehta made comments criticizing Proposition 208, the state campaign reform law now being challenged in court.

The complaint filed by Mehta includes various infractions of campaign reporting laws. It charges, for example, that the firefighters PAC violated the law by listing a $9,000 bill to Visa as a campaign expenditure rather than listing all the individual costs paid on the Visa bill, including printings and copying costs for campaign fliers.

The complaint also charges the PAC with failing to file reports of $12,000 in contributions to McCracken and $2,000 to Feldhaus within 24 hours after the contributions were made. The reports were filed one day late.

Feldhaus is accused of failing to include in campaign reports the addresses and telephone numbers of several contributors whose gifts to his campaign total $5,200.

Feldhaus and the PAC officials, Robert McDonald, William Knapp and Robert Stuart, are scheduled to be arraigned at Municipal Court in Fullerton on Dec. 1. If convicted of the misdemeanor charges, Feldhaus could face $18,000 in fines and six months in jail, and each of the firefighters $8,000 in fines and six months in jail.