By Carroll Wills, Communications Director, California Professional Firefighters

Last year, a shadowy Arizona non-profit got caught funneling $11 million of special interest cash into the No on 30/Yes on 32 campaign.

Bad enough. But for the last decade, a similar shell game has been quietly going on, and the deep pocket could be taxpayers themselves.

Since 2003, the League of California Cities and similar groups have spent over $17 million on campaigns through anonymous “non-public fund” accounts  — no FPPC number, no donor reporting, no clue as to the source.  Even in California, that’s not chump change.

At the same time, the League has pocketed an eerily similar amount of money in “marketing and governance fees” gleaned from the sale of taxpayer-subsidized bonds. The state Treasurer views these as public dollars. So, according to recent committee testimony (http://bit.ly/1cUyHA2; at 1:09:50 mark), does the California State Association of Counties.

The League, however, treats these funds as private profits, available for anything … possibly including campaigns. In 2006, the Orange Co. Register reported that they moved $3.6 million from the “fees” account into their undisclosed fund. By an amazing coincidence, they spent $3.5 million wound up on the ledger of a ballot campaign opposing Prop. 90.  

Remind you of anything?

SB 594 by Senator Jerry Hill goes after this gaping loophole. It strengthens the ban on using public dollars for political campaigns. And it forces these multi-million dollar campaign slush funds out of the shadows.

Is this a big deal? Well consider the fact that it has the support of organized labor and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. (mark the date – that doesn’t happen too often!) It also has the backing of the California Clean Money Campaign and Consumer Federation.

The League and its allies have, of course, gone ballistic, mobilizing their PR army with predictable mythology and carefully parsed words. They’ve huffed about how SB 594 “silences their voice” and try to frame the issue as a political grudge match. And they’ve tried to scare the life out of a lot of small non-profits who are specifically exempt from its provisions.

Why are they so afraid of disclosure? We’re certainly not. As a union, every single dollar we spend – political and otherwise – is disclosed, either through campaign finance accounts or federal LM-2 filings. We report everything and (thanks to the defeat of Prop. 32) our voice gets heard. But somehow theirs is “silenced” unless they can hide the source of $17 million in campaign spending?

It’s pretty simple: People have a right to know who’s paying for political campaigns. That goes double when there’s a chance that the money is coming out of their pockets.

SB 594 brings much-need sunlight to these hidden corners of campaign finance.  Find out more at www.stoptheshellgame.com.