Reform of Watergate-Era Campaign Donation Law Urged

The Watergate-era reform act that governs the way California political campaigns are run has grown so burdensome that it is preventing potential candidates from seeking office, according to a report released Wednesday.

The bipartisan commission that produced the report, which received an icy reception from political watchdog groups, wants to overhaul California’s Political Reform Act, the finance and election law approved by voters in 1974.

“There is a critical need to simplify the act and bring greater fairness to the enforcement process,” said Steven S. Lucas, a political attorney who is the commission’s chairman.

The commission, established by the Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson in 1998 to assess the law’s effectiveness, is recommending 35 reforms in its 77-page report titled “Overly Complex and Unduly Burdensome.”

“The act applies to every candidate for every office in California,” said former Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle, one of 14 commission members. “What we heard from a number of candidates who ran for . . . City Council offices or school board offices is that the act is not simple to follow. . . . It dissuades people from participating in the political process.”

The commission’s report was presented Wednesday to Gov. Gray Davis, the Legislature and the Fair Political Practices Commission, the entity that enforces the reform act. The ballot measure that gave rise to the act can be amended with a two-thirds vote of the Legislature and Davis’ approval.

Karen Getman, head of the Fair Political Practices Commission, said her commission will decide what parts of the report it will support following a briefing on the document in September. She warned that it may disagree with recommendations that deal with enforcement, but applauded other parts of the report.

“The thing I was most struck by were the focus groups and comments by people who actually have to use the Political Reform Act,” Getman said. “We are also certainly taking to heart the campaign finance support experiment in which no member who was given a copy of a [campaign reporting form] could fill it out.”

The report’s recommendations include raising reporting thresholds for campaign contributions, eliminating certain gift reporting requirements, creating a simpler filing schedule and requiring the Secretary of State to notify state candidates of disclosure requirements. It also increases the maximum amount the panel can levy against violators from $2,000 to $5,000.

The document drew criticism from campaign reform advocates, who said the findings were predictable given the makeup of the commission.

“Frankly, we don’t think this commission has much credibility,” said Jim Knox, executive director of California Common Cause. “They’ve gone out of their way not to comply with their legal mandate to have a public member on the commission. . . . The commission is dominated by political attorneys who have a vested interest in weakening the act.”

Political reform activist Tony Miller described the document as “anti-reform” and said it is intended to repeal key elements of the Political Reform Act. He said he expects seven of the panel’s 35 recommendations to be controversial, including:

* Raising the threshold for “major donor” reporting from $10,000 to $100,000 and eliminating the requirement once the secretary of state has fully implemented electronic disclosure and creates a database.

* Increasing the threshold for contributions and expenditures from $100 to $200.

* Eliminating “gift” reporting if the source of the gift is outside the jurisdiction of the public official and does not conduct business in the jurisdiction.