Money laundered from engineering trade group to a campaign against Prop 30 and for Prop 32

by Brian Leubitz

This was bound to happen at some point, the first of the donors to the so-called “Small Business Action Committee” that supported Prop 32 and opposed Prop 30 has been outed by reports.

An engineering trade organization that advocates for privatizing government work has been tied to the group behind the $11 million dark money donation that prompted a legal showdown in California last fall.

The $400,000 that can now be traced back to a group called the American Council of Engineering Companies in California (ACEC-CA) may not be the biggest of disclosures, but when it comes to dark money in politics, any transparency at all is a revelation.

Campaign finance reports released last week in California show that the Sacramento, Calif.-based ACEC-CA wrote two checks to the conservative group Americans for Job Security in 2012, one in July for $150,000 and one in September for $250,000, which were described in disclosures to California’s Secretary of State as intended for “issue advocacy.”(TPM)

Now, the biggest checks were still written by a man we know all too well, Charles T. Munger, the son of Warren Buffet’s business partner. But, we may yet learn a few more names about who else laundered a bit of cash to support Prop 32’s anti-labor agenda.