Costly Campaign Investigation

Anaheim has provided other cities with a valuable lesson: Let a city attorney or county district attorney or the state Fair Political Practices Commission investigate allegations of relatively minor campaign finance violations.

Two Anaheim City Council members decided otherwise last year and hired a special prosecutor, the first time a California city or county had gone that route to look into campaign financing.

It took only two votes because other council members had to abstain because they were targets of the investigation. Worse, the duo hired the special prosecutor to inspect the finance statements of their political foes. That gave the probe the appearance of a politically motivated witch hunt.

In the last six months as special prosecutor, Ravi Mehta has charged Anaheim more than $300,000 in fees and expenses. When the city belatedly decided to fire him, Mehta sued. This month he billed the city more than $12,000 in fees for his lawyer to fight the dismissal.

That’s outrageous. Trying to make the city pay Mehta’s lawyer to keep him when it no longer wants his services is Alice-in-Wonderland logic.

So far the city has refused to reimburse Mehta for any bills received after March 17, when he was fired. The council appointed a new special prosecutor, who got a court to reject Mehta’s lawsuit challenging his dismissal. Again the question: Why is the city using a special prosecutor when other avenues are available?

During his tenure, Mehta settled four cases of campaign finance law violations. Mayor Tom Daly and a former council member are still battling charges.

It is important that campaign finance laws be obeyed. But even the staunchest good-government advocates criticized this prosecution effort as overly aggressive. Most of the charges involved missing filing deadlines by short periods or not listing the occupations of individual donors.

Anaheim should have let local prosecutors or the state commission determine whether there were violations of campaign financing laws that warranted prosecution. The city has wasted its money.