SEIU's blatant disregard for the spirit of campaign finance laws prompts review in left-ish Santa CruzIn light of unprecedented spending in the District 1 supervisorial race, at least one supervisor concedes that county caps on campaign contributions are failing to limit money's role in politics, and she wants to consider removing them.
Supervisor Jan Beautz, who is leaving office this year and watched a pricey fight ensue for her seat, says hefty union spending exposed a "loophole" in the county's campaign finance limits. She says it created an inequity that needs to be addressed.
"This isn't fair. You have one group giving as much as they want," Beautz said. "It seems to me that if we didn't have the caps on other contributors, everybody could just give what they want. That seems more fair."
Beautz says she plans to schedule a discussion of the county's campaign finance laws with her colleagues on the Board of Supervisors. A date has not been set.
The issue follows roughly $60,000 of spending in October by the Service Employees International Union on behalf of supervisor candidate John Leopold, who won Tuesday's race.
The union money was reported as "independent expenditures," which means it can't be given directly to a candidate, only spent on his behalf, but it enjoys immunity from county campaign finance laws.
Direct contributions, by contrast, are limited to $250 per person and $600 per group.
Beautz, who has served on the board for 20 years, says there's always been an implicit agreement among candidates to stick to the smaller sums and eschew independent expenditures. But if that understanding is lost, she insists the rules need to be changed.
"Our caps on spending have served this county well. But I'm afraid a Pandora's box has been opened," Beautz said. "This has changed the landscape completely."
Big money hard to stop
The issue of big money in local politics is not unique to Santa Cruz.
"Money is going to find its way where it needs to go," said Denise Roth Barber, research director of the National Institute on Money in State Politics. "As long as there are independent expenditures, contribution limits are not going to stop the flow of special interest money."
Government is prohibited from limiting independent expenditures, with the Supreme Court ruling that spending is an expression of free speech. Independent expenditures, though, can't be spent in coordination with the campaign they're targeting, as that would be construed as a direct contribution.
The difference between independent expenditures and contributions is sometimes fuzzy, however, and the matter is not commonly prosecuted, confirmed officials at the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
Some counties, like neighboring Monterey County, do not have campaign contribution limits. There, campaigns for supervisor positions can run several hundred-thousand dollars.
Locally, campaign spending has been more tame, with races rarely topping $100,000.
"Keeping spending in scope with the community," says former county Supervisor Gary Patton, is the intent of the county's contribution caps, which were established during his tenure.
The 1976 law limited direct contributions to $100 per person.
Despite the presence of independent expenditures, Patton sees little reason to abandon county limits. Having some controls on spending is better than none, he said. And even when independent money comes, he added, voters serve as the necessary check.
"If people in Live Oak think that their supervisor is being bought and sold, there's a real good possibility that they'll vote against him," Patton said.
This year's union spending on behalf of Leopold, an amount not seen in a supervisor race before, provided a more than 50 percent boost to the nearly $100,000 the campaign collected on its own. His opponent Betty Danner also raised nearly $100,000 but had no independent expenditures.
New campaign finance rules
Beyond eliminating caps outright, other options exist for trying to prevent disproportionate amounts of money from slipping into local politics.
"I think there's a middle ground," said Fred Keeley, a former county supervisor who has worked on state campaign finance reform.
One alternative, Keeley said, would be to maintain the current limits, but establish a trigger that removes them if independent expenditures come in.
Another possibility is raising the current limits, which haven't been changed in at least a decade, an option that Beautz said she will also consider.
Keeley agreed that a renewed discussion of the issue was a good idea.
Representatives with SEIU Local 521, which represents nearly 2,000 county employees, said there's no plan to continue spending the sums they recently spent, but it could happen.
"I don't expect it will be a regular occurrence, because there are limited resources," said member Jim Heaney. "But if the situation warrants it ..."
Union expenditures are common in supervisor races elsewhere, like Santa Clara County.
A merger of the local SEIU chapter two years ago into a larger, regional chapter, which includes Santa Clara County, has meant better political strategizing and more resources for labor in Santa Cruz County.
(santacruzsentinel.com)
