State Fines Political Group $80,000

California’s Fair Political Practices Commission announced Friday that it has imposed an $80,000 penalty on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for violations of campaign finance disclosure regulations in 2000.

The commission, which seeks to enforce campaign finance laws, collected the fine as part of a settlement of a lawsuit alleging that the Democratic committee failed to properly file campaign reports publicly disclosing the donations.

The committee, part of the national Democratic organization, missed by three months the January 2001 deadline for filing a report with the California secretary of state’s office in Sacramento.

The 363-page report detailed $3.1 million in donations to California races made during the 2000 campaign.

The report also included 1,647 donations made to the committee from an array of donors, including longtime Democratic contributors, telecommunications firms, oil companies and electricity generators.

In addition to failing to file the printed report, the committee was supposed to submit by Jan. 31, 2001, an electronic version of its report to be posted on the secretary of state’s Web site. That version was not made until March 28, 2002.

The Democratic committee said in a statement that the $80,000 settlement “addresses technical compliance matters.” The committee noted in a statement that it filed the report at the time with the Federal Election Commission.

The California commission could have imposed a fine as large as the amount that was not disclosed -- $3.1 million. However, the largest fine the commission has ever imposed was $808,000.

Steven Russo, the commission’s chief of enforcement, said the $80,000 penalty is “large enough that it will be felt and large enough to deter future violations.”

He added that, while the Democratic committee had not been trying to evade state disclosure rules, it had showed a “pattern of negligence.”

“You’re dealing with a very sophisticated player that presumably had all the resources available to comply with the requirements,” Russo said.

California Republican Party spokesman Rob Stutzman said the $80,000 penalty “doesn’t come close to deterring future abuse of that magnitude.”

The congressional campaign committee made donations to 27 state campaign committees. The California Democratic Party was by far the largest recipient, at $2.5 million.

Much of the money went for voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts.

The party also gave donations of $250,000 to Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) and then-Speaker Bob Hertzberg, a Democrat from the San Fernando Valley.

It gave smaller donations to candidates for state legislative races in districts where congressional candidates faced difficult campaigns.

The national Democratic and Republican parties traditionally have donated to their California affiliates because, while there are restrictions on donations to federal campaigns, state law before 2002 had no caps on campaign donations or on spending.