County Moves to Enforce Fundraising Rules

Los Angeles County supervisors took a step Tuesday toward putting some teeth in their campaign fundraising limits, asking county elections officials and prosecutors to solve problems that have allowed violators to go unpunished for nine years.

The supervisors asked the county’s chief elections officials to develop a plan to screen campaign finance statements for violations of the rules. They also asked prosecutors to work out a way to penalize the most serious offenders.

The actions, resulting from two motions written by Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mike Antonovich, came on the day The Times reported that more than two dozen improper donations have gone undiscovered and unpunished since the 2003-04 election cycle.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to require county officials to begin enforcing Proposition B, an initiative to limit fundraising that was passed overwhelmingly by county voters in 1996.

The district attorney and the registrar-recorder’s office, which are designated to police the campaign fundraising law, disagree about which agency should look for violations.

The district attorney’s office also concluded that it could not successfully file charges against offenders.

“Forget it wasn’t being enforced, it wasn’t even being looked at,” said Yaroslavsky, who proposed Proposition B. “We need to have a screening process. We need to have a process by which it is triaged and then referred to the district attorney for enforcement, if that proves necessary.”

The violations noted in The Times report included contributions that exceeded limits established by Proposition B and that came from registered lobbyists, who are barred by county law from giving money.

Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley and Supervisors Antonovich, Don Knabe and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke accepted improper donations, according to campaign statements.

All four said they accepted them in error.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney said Cooley had set up a meeting, before Tuesday’s vote, with county staff who oversee lobbyist registrations and election records to discuss how they could work together. “We’ve already got the ball in motion here,” said spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons.

Registrar-Recorder Conny B. McCormack said she was optimistic that her office would be better able to review filings early next year, once election records are filed electronically.

Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies and a campaign reform advocate, called the supervisors’ actions “impressive” but said the law should have been enforced from the start.

“Clearly, they’re embarrassed,” he said. “Receiving contributions over the limit is amazing to me.”

Stern, who helped write the state’s landmark 1974 campaign finance and conflict-of-interest law, suggested that offenders face administrative fines similar to those imposed by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for violations of the 31-year-old law.

Currently, the county’s law allows for criminal prosecution or a fine. But there’s no way to impose a fine without filing a civil lawsuit.

“Whose going to file a lawsuit?” Stern asked. “There’s got to be some administrative teeth to it.”

He also called on the county to lower its limits for donations to officeholder accounts, which supervisors use to pay travel and other business expenses. The limit stands at $1,000 per contributor per year.

Yaroslavsky said he supported the county’s fining violators and suggested that the registrar-recorder handle that role. But he rejected the idea of lowering donation limits.

The county’s campaign limits, he said, compare favorably with others around the country when the size of the population -- 10 million people -- is taken into account. He said most donations fall within the campaign law limits, a far cry from the days a decade ago when unions, corporations or county contractors could contribute tens of thousands of dollars to a single candidate.

“It’s been extremely successful,” Yaroslavsky said of the law. “It’s enabled the Board of Supervisors to be far more independent of special interests.”

Proposition B restricts contributions to candidates running for eight elected offices: five county supervisors, sheriff, assessor and district attorney.

But the vaguely worded law does not spell out how the limits should be enforced, leaving it up to the registrar-recorder and district attorney to decide how to handle investigations and prosecutions.

Registrar-recorder officials said they did not believe their office was required to check for violations, adding that they lack the resources to do a thorough job.

County prosecutors concluded that in most cases they would need bank records of the donations in order to file charges. But they said that they lacked the legal authority to obtain a search warrant for the records because violations can be prosecuted only as a misdemeanor.

They also said that they lacked the authority of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission to subpoena such records.