Show Us the Money

What do the Democratic and Republican parties have to hide? Why don’t party bosses want their big donors identified? Why are they asking the Fair Political Practices Commission to keep Los Angeles voters in the dark?

Thanks to a misleading state law, Proposition 34, political parties can funnel millions into political races--such as the nonpartisan Los Angeles mayoral election and other municipal contests--without revealing either the individual source of that cash or the exact amount.

That secrecy does a disservice to voters who need to know before they cast their ballots exactly who is paying for that flood of television commercials, the onslaught of telephone calls and the deluge of slick, colored brochures.

The Prop. 34 loophole specifically allows political parties and other organizations, such as unions, to communicate with their members without publicly disclosing in a timely fashion their spending or the source of their funds. That rule is fine for a newsletter or a telephone tree for the neighborhood block club, but in the case of political mailings, it means the money can’t be traced until long after voters go to the polls.

Both parties took advantage of the 6-month-old law in the Los Angeles mayoral primary.

The state Democratic Party made a major push on behalf of Antonio Villaraigosa. The state Republican Party sent numerous mailers backing businessman Steve Soboroff and attacking his rivals to GOP voters.

Neither party had to reveal any information about their spending or the source of those millions before the primary. This undermined the city’s campaign reporting rules.

In response, the Los Angeles City Council, at the urging of the city ethics commission, managed to rush through a provision closing that disclosure loophole and mandating reporting before Tuesday’s election. As a result, voters learned--before the ballots were cast--the sources of more than $800,000 spent to influence the outcome.

That emergency ordinance, which applied only to Tuesday’s contest, attracted attention beyond city borders.

The major parties have appealed to the FPPC, which will hear the matter today. The commission should act in accord with the principal findings of the state Political Reform Act of 1974, the Post-Watergate law that created the FPPC and that said “receipts and expenditures in election campaigns should be fully and truthfully disclosed in order that the voters may be fully informed and improper practices may be inhibited.”

Unfortunately, the FPPC is already making noises that it agrees with the parties’ stance that they should be exempt from such city ordinances because of a need for statewide ‘uniformity’ in campaign laws. If the FPPC insists on uniformity, it should follow the city on this issue.

Why is the FPPC staff allowing itself to become a tool for the major political parties? What happened to local decision-making? The Los Angeles ordinance should be left alone.