Solis Can Keep Award Lantern, Panel Rules

A state watchdog agency agreed Friday to let Sen. Hilda Solis keep a $10,000 silver lantern she won as recipient of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s “Profiles in Courage” award.

The Fair Political Practices Commission decided that acceptance of the prize by the La Puente Democrat would not violate California’s tough restrictions on gifts to elected officials.

On a 4-1 vote, the commission concluded that its “common sense” interpretation of the law enabled Solis to claim the lantern without violating conflict of interest rules.

“We won. I’m thrilled,” Solis said.

She won the annual award last month for introducing a 1997 bill to protect low-income and minority neighborhoods from receiving a disproportionate share of new landfills and dump sites. It was vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson.

Included in the prize was a Tiffany lantern, meant to symbolize a “beacon of hope,” and $25,000 in cash. Solis said she will donate the cash to environmental groups but wants to keep the $10,000 lantern because it symbolizes the “very essence of the award.”

But the state’s voter-approved political reform laws are so restrictive that the commission was told by its staff: “A California elected official who won a Nobel Prize might not be able to accept it.”

At issue was a statute that prohibits lawmakers from accepting gifts worth more than $300, although there are limited exceptions. In order to keep the lantern, Solis faced the prospect of paying the difference of roughly $9,700 from personal funds, a sum she said she could not afford.

During testimony, the commission was told that Solis would have no conflict of interest in accepting the prize because the nonprofit Kennedy Library Foundation is in Boston, does not lobby California lawmakers and probably does no business in the state.

The award itself, the foundation says, is intended to recognize elected officials who risk their political careers by taking on powerful adversaries to advance democracy.

“I cannot imagine a situation where [Kennedy Foundation directors] would come and lobby a legislator about anything,” said Commissioner Gordana Swanson.

But Commissioner Kathleen R. Makel, who cast the only no vote, argued that although Solis may be deserving of the award, the “law is very clear that she ought not to be able to keep it. Unfortunately, the law doesn’t provide exceptions for the good guys.”

Chairwoman Karen A. Getman countered that the gift law demanded a “common sense” interpretation that would allow Solis to accept the lantern.

“The context of this act is not to penalize public officials but to keep them honest,” she said.

However, political reform activist Tony Miller of Sacramento, who said Solis deserved the award, warned against approving exceptions that could put the commission on a “slippery slope” to unintended consequences.

For example, Miller said, creative special interests that now are prohibited from giving gifts to public officials might try to establish nonprofit foundations as fronts that would hand out free gifts.

“What if the NRA sponsored a bona fide competition for elected officials and awarded a musket that was valued at more than $300? Or, [what if] Philip Morris sponsored some sort of national competition to give away a free trip to the clinic to get treatment for cancer?” Miller asked.

Miller, a charter member of the watchdog commission in 1975, urged the panel not to “shut our eyes to the fact that there is a [$300 gift limit] statute there.”