by Steve Smith, California Labor Federation

California’s Fair Political Practices Commission today sent a strong message to shadowy out-of-state special-interest groups and donors trying to influence our state’s elections by levying record fines for contributions to committees that supported Prop 32 and opposed Prop 30.

According to the Sacramento Bee:

In a campaign finance case watched around the country, California’s political watchdog has levied a $1 million fine against two non-profit groups for inappropriately laundering money during last year’s ballot initiative wars.

The Fair Political Practices Commission announced the settlement with the Center to Protect Patient Rights and Americans for Responsible Leadership, two groups based in Arizona that the FPPC describes as part of a network operated by the conservative Koch brothers.

The commission also sent letters to two California committees demanding they pay the state general fund more than $15 million they received from groups that didn’t properly report the source of their funds.

These groups used every dirty trick in the book to try to hoodwink voters into passing the pernicious Prop 32, a measure which would have silenced workers, and defeat Prop 30, the tax measure to fund our schools. Ultimately, they failed because voters saw through the façade.

Reaction was swift from union leaders to this landmark settlement.

California Labor Federation Leader Art Pulaski:

With today’s record fine, California sent a strong message to shadowy special-interest groups that we won’t tolerate illicit campaign donations that undermine our democracy. We applaud Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) Chair Ann Ravel for aggressively pursuing this investigation and holding these out-of-state dark-money groups accountable for violating California law.

California Professional Firefighters President and Alliance for a Better California Chair Lou Paulson expressed outrage that the California-based Small Business Action Committee (SBAC) was the lynchpin for the illegal effort. SBAC was ordered by the FPPC to repay the $11 million it received from the out-of-state front groups.

The FPPC action offers final proof of an open secret: Corporate California is using dark money to try to game California’s election process. It’s clear there was a calculated effort by California political operatives to hide the involvement of California interests in the Prop. 30 and 32 campaigns. We’re appalled that the SBAC would be the conduit for this money-laundering scheme.

SEIU California President Laphonza Butler also applauded today’s action, yet noted more needs to be done to shed light on these dark money groups that try to rig elections in California.

With the identity of the secret donors still unknown, it’s clear that our campaign finance laws contain loopholes that allow shadowy front groups to deceive voters by hiding the source of campaign dollars. We call on legislators to strengthen campaign finance laws to prevent billionaires and corporate titans like the Koch brothers from using shadowy front groups to buy California elections.

Longtime pending reform moves ahead, enforcement still far from clear

by Brian Leubitz

The FPPC has been looking at regulating “bloggers” and social media for a while now. For a good review of some of their early discussions, see Julia Rosen’s post from their 2010 hearing on the subject. But yesterday they passed the new regulations:

Bloggers and others who are paid to post political messages online are subject to new disclosure rules under regulations the Fair Political Practices Commission approved Thursday.

Campaign committees will now have to report who they pay to post “favorable or unfavorable” content on blogs, social media or online videos on their campaign finance statements, and report the name of the website where the content appears.

“The purpose overall is to let the public know that they can go compare what the campaign is paying for to what is showing up online,” said FPPC attorney Heather Rowan.(SacBee)

I don’t doubt that the FPPC’s heart is in the right place, but as Steven Maviglio points out, the system is unworkable from any number of levels. And as former Schwarzenegger aide Rob Stutzman is quoted in the Bee, the system creates regulatory road blocks without actually helping voters discern what is paid for communication.

Now, I should also point out that I am occasionally paid by campaigns, but I’ve been using disclosures on each and every post associated with those campaigns. Not to be too self-congratulatory here, but I think it is just the right thing to do. However, these regulations don’t require that, but rather require reporting to the FPPC. That could be useful if somebody follows up on those FPPC forms in some database, but there are certainly no guarantees of clarity.

Furthermore, the devil is in the details. The current regulation leaves a lot of room for interpretation. How will campaign employees twitter accounts be regulated? How will they manage enforcement of occasionally pseudonymous or anonymous internet postings? And are these regulations constitutional under the Supreme Court’s (rather extreme) First Amendment jurisprudence?

Those questions will likely be answered during the next campaign cycle or two. The risk is that by the time those questions are answered, a whole new set will have taken their place.

FPPC looks to clean up the initiative gathering money bonanza

by Brian Leubitz

It was rule-making week over at the FPPC, and they served up a few rules of note. Starting with something on the initiative front:

The people who pay for petition drives in support of statewide ballot measures can no longer hide their identity, thanks to a regulation adopted by the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission on Thursday.(SDUT)

Anybody who drops more than $100K on signature gathering, which won’t really get you too far these days, must now report.

On another front, political committees that send out emails must now identify themselves. It seems shocking that this wasn’t the case before, but apparently a few tricksters sent out an email last cycle signed only as “The Hardy Boys” and “Nancy Drew”. Cute.

There is still much work to be done on initiative reform. For most folks who sign the form, the last thing they are going to think to do is look at Cal-Access to see who is paying the gatherers. But, baby steps forward are better than no steps.

To be fair, I think few are surprised by the discussion about regulating social media.  But, before we get too deep into it, at this point we are talking about the tools that are used by candidates and campaigns, rather than ordinary citizens (or not so ordinary bloggers).  

Politicians’ tweets and status updates should be held to the same standards as paid advertising that voters see on television, hear on radio or find in their mailboxes, California’s campaign watchdog agency says in a report being released Monday. …

{FPPC Chairman Dan Schnur} said California’s 36-year-old Political Reform Act needs rewriting to keep up with the times.

“Our goal here is to meet the new challenges of 21st Century technology,” Schnur said. “There’s no way that the authors of the act could have anticipated that these of types of communicating a campaign message would ever exist.” (SF Chronicle)

In the changing new media landscape, we do need new rules for disclosure.  When campaigns are using these new tools, it is often difficult to know what rules apply at any given time apply.  The default example here is of course the 140 character tweet, where disclosure would look crazy.  But, should the campaign’s twitter account page carry some disclosure? That seems a legitimate question.

But there are other examples. Take the problem of GoogleAds.  If you go searching for any marginally controversial political subject, you’ll find some ads on both sides.  Some will let you know by the URL or other device where they are coming from. Others will not be as clear, say an organization highlighting a news article that favors a candidate.  Do we require that ad to disclose its funding?  The advertiser is dealing with very limited space, and most disclosures would cannibalize the whole ad. So where is the line? How do we allow these tools to be used without confusing voters and letting spending get out of control?

These are not simple questions, and no simple answers will be arriving. Perhaps the FPPC works with some of these companies to facilitate disclosure, but the important point that should be taken away from this discussion is that the FPPC needs to get more nimble.  

In 2006, Twitter was barely a concept. And who knows what will be all the rage in 2014. But, we can’t keep having this conversation every year.  Let’s ensure disclosure, but be very careful to avoid crushing the tools.

This morning I had the opportunity to speak in front of the FPPC subcommittee on the Political Reform Act and Internet political activity as they contemplate potentially further regulating disclosure and reporting requirements for the Internet.  Also appearing on the “political consultants” panel with me were Steve Maviglio, and Bryan Merica from ID Media and Fox & Hounds Daily.  The goo-goo groups followed us, Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation, Derek Cressman, Common Cause, Tiffany Mok, ACLU and Barbara O’Connor, Sacramento State University.

Ironically, the Internet subcommittee hearing was not broadcast on the web, though you could listen to it on a 1-800 number.  And of course there was no wifi in the room.

The FPPC subcommittee members are concerned about voters not knowing who is paying for both advertising and content on the web.  At the same time, they were pretty clear that they did not want to stifle political communication and see the Internet as a great for Democracy.

Much of the discussion focused on disclosure of the committees/candidates responsible for advertising and email communication.  Just about everyone agreed that disclosure was conceptually a good thing, but I and others made the point that a one size fits all policy will not work.  For example, one could have a committee name so long that it would take up the whole character limit on a Google search ad.  Or setting a rule that the disclosure language must take up 5% of the space on a image ad like Florida recently did would make it illegible at places like Calitics.  Our standard ads here are 150×200 pixels. Nobody could read text that took up 5% of that space.

It does make sense on the other hand to require disclosure of the candidate/committee on the landing page (the page where people are redirected to upon clicking the link).  There will be plenty of room to put the name on those pages.  Full credit to Bob Brigham for the idea, but one could link the FPPC number right to the Secretary of State page for that entity, which discloses the contributors and expenditures data.

There was also some discussion about the difficulty in regulating disclosure on sites like Facebook/Twitter.  They are constantly changing their design and interface.  It might be possible now to post the committee name now on the front page of a Fan page, but we may not have that functionality a year from now.  The basic point is that the Internet and these sites in particular are evolving at such a fast rate that it may be impossible to set up detailed requirements that are not quickly outdated.

A great deal of time was spent on sockpuppets and paid shills who are not disclosing that they are being hired to blog by a campaign.  The subcommittee members seemed inclined to require that bloggers disclose if they are being paid to blog.  Even I did not argue too strongly against that.  While we are pretty good at self-policing, it is not a perfect system.  All of us editors here at Calitics voluntarily disclose who we are being paid by if it is relevant to the posting.  Steve Maviglio in particular welcomed this idea.  Derek Cressman suggested that one alternative might be simply more detailed reporting to the state about what individuals are being hired to do.

The FPPC staff recommended that independent bloggers be treated just like journalists.  The commissioners were a bit hesitant about doing so, and suggested perhaps creating a separate category.  But I and others argued that the lines are so blurred these days between who is a blogger and journalist that it did not make sense.  Given the decimation of the Sacramento press corps, it is more important than ever that we encourage journalism and blogging, rather than pass further regulation.  

I also gave them the example from the other week of a traditional media outlet getting Rep. Jerry McNerney’s position on the health care reform bill incorrect.  It was blogger Dave Dayen who was the one who picked up the phone, called the office and got the correct information published.  Now was he a journalist who was blogging his work, or was he a blogger acting like a journalist?  How does one draw the line?

No specifics were discussed with regards to independent bloggers, but don’t be surprised to see them pick this up again at a future date.  Speaking of dates, next week they will be holding a similar hearing in Los Angeles with FEC commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub on the schedule.  She will be talking about how the FEC has been tackling these same issues.

The commissioners were looking for advice on what we as practitioners were looking for from them: regulation or advisory letters.  Given the speed of innovation, it certainly makes more sense for guidance than regulation with fines as punishment.  The commission doesn’t exactly move at warp speed, so don’t expect to see anything out of them for some time.  All in all it was a very good open discussion and while I believe we further complexified the situation for them, it illuminated the issues they have to take in to consideration as they contemplate taking action.

Links?  I’ll show you some links!

• The latest Don Perata story concerned money he took from his own ballot campaign account into his legal defense fund.  He’s entitled to do that for the time being, but the Fair Political Practices Commission is considering new rules to strengthen the campaign finance laws around these kinds of accounts.  I think “abolished” might be a good way to go for these slush funds.

• Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas has a pretty cool tribute to Martin Luther King on his website today, on the occasion of his 80th birthday.  Eight elected officials in LA County answer the question, “What is the significance of this year’s Martin Luther King Day to you?”

• New Rep. Duncan Hunter, following in the legacy of his father, is whining about potential Guantanamo detainees behind held temporarily at Camp Pendleton.  He claims their presence would “distract” the Marines there.  Considering these detainees have been held in what amounts to a concentration camp and tortured, I think “distraction” is but a small price to pay.

• On yesterday’s SCHIP vote, which passed resoundingly in the House, Hunter joined most California Republicans in voting against medical care for children.  Only Mary Bono Mack defied her Republican counterparts.

• The CBP blog thinks we should look at enterprise zone programs as a good place to start cutting the budget.  A new study by the PPIC claims they are completely ineffective.  I’m all for eliminating useless tax breaks.

• There is a Los Angeles municipal election on March 3, and the only race worth following is a crowded contest for Jack Weiss’ old city council seat.  Six candidates (including progressive former Assemblyman Paul Koretz) all raised roughly the same amount of money in the last quarter.

• This is a pretty big ruling for environmentalists, as an Australian firm has bowed to pressure and scrapped their plans for an LNG terminal off of Santa Monica Bay.

• And then there’s the story about the California man who tried to sell his 14 year-old daughter into marriage for cash, beer and meat, and then attempted to have the groom arrested when he wouldn’t pay up.  Hey, I didn’t know that the dowry was back in fashion!