Free Republic

Americans for Job Security, a conservative, pro-business national group, is the true source of the $11 million last-minute infusion of campaign cash into a California political committee that supports an antiunion ballot measure and opposes Gov. Jerry Brown's tax proposition, state campaign finance regulators announced early Monday. But the hard-fought disclosure, which comes just one day before the election, creates more questions than it answers, because under federal law, Americans for Job Security does not have to reveal its donors.

The state Supreme Court issued an order Sunday to allow California's political watchdog to identify contributors to an Arizona group's last-minute infusion of $11 million to the campaigns opposing Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative and supporting an antiunion measure on Tuesday's ballot. But the Arizona group declined to turn over its records by the court's 4 p.m. deadline and told a state lawyer it was planning to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, said Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the state Fair Political Practices Commission. The refusal reduced the likelihood that the donors will be publicly identified before Tuesday, when the...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has agreed to pay nearly $42,000 in fines to resolve state and city investigations into his practice of accepting tickets to sports events, concerts and pricey entertainment activities without reporting them as gifts, officials said Friday. In a pact drafted by officials with the state Fair Political Practices Commission and the city Ethics Commission, Villaraigosa admitted that he failed to report free tickets to 34 events during his first five years in office, including Los Angeles Lakers games and concerts at such venues as Gibson Amphitheater. Villaraigosa faced a maximum fine of more than $167,000...

Assemblyman Michael Allen will remain on the Assembly Legislative Ethics Committee despite conceding a violation of the state's Political Reform Act and accepting a $3,000 fine from the state's political watchdog agency. Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said last week that the first-year legislator's violation was unintentional, occurred prior to his election to the Assembly, and that he will not be replaced on the six-member ethics panel. "He has accepted responsibility for his mistake, which is why he agreed with the (Fair Political Practices Commission) with respect to their decision," Pérez said in a written statement. "He will continue to...

The state’s ethics enforcement agency disclosed Wednesday it is investigating several present and former leaders of California’s $43-billion bullet train project to determine if they violated regulations on receipt of gifts. The investigation follows reports in The Times that officials with the California High-Speed Rail Authority took overseas trips paid for by foreign governments jockeying to help their homeland firms secure state contracts. Though not providing specifics, Fair Political Practices Commission Executive Director Roman Porter said based on the paper’s reporting, his agency has “undertaken a proactive investigation.” The inquiries are focusing on California High-Speed Rail Authority Chairman Curt Pringle...

Tweeters, bloggers and Facebook users beware: The state Fair Political Practices Commission is on to you. Online political activity has long been considered a Wild West of unregulated free speech, where everything from YouTube videos to Facebook postings can circulate without any hint of who paid for them. Today, the five-member commission is likely to take an important first step to ending that online party. It's poised to write rules that would require campaigns to follow the same guidelines governing old-world media such as TV commercials and mailers. That means requiring text on online ads that disclose the spots' funders,...

California's political watchdog agency is proposing to fine the Mormon church $5,539 for contributions to help pass the state's gay-marriage ban two years ago. The Fair Political Practices Commission is scheduled to act on the proposed fine at a public meeting Thursday. The monetary penalty stems from 17 non-monetary contributions totaling $36,928 that were made by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints within three weeks of the November 2008 election

The California Teachers Association has spent more than $200 million on campaign contributions and lobbying efforts in the last decade, leading what the Fair Political Practices Commission calls a "billion-dollar club" of moneyed political interests. The FPPC's report, entitled "Big Money Talks," delves into the 25 biggest - at least in financial terms - political players in the state, which have collectively spent $1.3 billion on political action in the last 10 years. "This tsunami of special interest spending drowns out the voices of average voters," FPPC chairman Ross Johnson said in a statement, "and intimidates political opponents and elected...

February's Top Ten list compiled by the FPPC identifies those individual donors who have contributed the most money to California candidates and ballot measures from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009. This list includes five candidates or former candidates for state office, whose totals include personal money contributed to their own campaigns, as well as money they contributed to ballot measures and other candidates and committees.

Chump change for a billionaire, but embarrassing still. Uber wealthy New York investment czar George Soros has agreed to pay an $8,000 penalty to California's Fair Political Practices Commission for breaching the state's campaign finance rules five years ago. The payment is part of a proposed settlement between Soros and FPPC, whose members will either approve or reject the settlement at a May 21 public meeting. The FPPC says that in October 2004, Soros made a $350,000 late contribution to the Drug Policy Action Network. However, he failed to disclose it in a timely way by reporting it as required...

California politicians seeking and occupying seats in the Legislature and statewide office have raised more than $1 billion since 2000, despite a voter-imposed cap on campaign contributions, according to a critical new report by the state's campaign watchdog agency. "The $1,006,638,463 directly raised by officeholders and candidates works out to $344,503 per day or $14,354 per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," said Ross Johnson, chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission, .. The FPPC's new report, entitled "The Billion Dollar Money Train," criticizes the vast sums of special interest money that has...

Charges of an ethics lapse by a stem cell scientist seeking a California research grant have been resolved with a "warning letter" from the state's Fair Political Practices Commission. The controversy arose more than a year ago when Dr. John Reed, chief executive officer of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla (San Diego County), wrote a letter to the chief scientist of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine urging the agency to reverse its rejection of a $630,000 grant to one of the institute's scientists. Reed is a member of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, the state-sponsored...

State Sen. Carole Migden and California's political watchdog agency have settled their lawsuits against each other. The litigation was initiated in Sacramento federal court with a lot of huffing and puffing but bowed out with a whimper. Under terms filed Wednesday, Migden, a volatile San Francisco Democrat, will pay the Fair Political Practices Commission $40,000 to resolve allegations she violated a host of campaign finance regulations. Contrast that to the agency's countersuit, filed three weeks after Migden sued the FPPC for preventing her in this year's campaign from spending money she raised before being elected to the Senate. The FPPC...

SACRAMENTO -- -- The state's ethics agency announced fines Monday against former state Sen. Martha Escutia of Whittier for failing to properly disclose at least $340,000 in payments made by 17 special-interest firms and campaigns to her then-husband's political consulting firm. The state Fair Political Practices Commission also announced fines against former Gov. Gray Davis, related to the campaign fund he used to fight the 2003 recall that removed him from office. He failed to fully disclose $187,381 in unpaid expenses and a late contribution, and he did not keep some records required for donors who gave $5,000 or more,...

It seems like California’s official campaign finance watchdog is barking a little louder these days about the role of money in politics. And its top target: the murky world of interest groups who ostensibly operate independently of the campaigns run by candidates for office. The Fair Political Practices Commission recently began a new effort to shine light on the millions of dollars in “independent expenditures” spent in support or opposition of various candidates. IEs, as they’re known to politicos, gained special prominence after the passage of Proposition 34 in 2000. The ballot measure was marketed as a way to dampen...

Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, is facing two formidable challengers in the June primary, Assemblyman Mark Leno of San Francisco and former Assemblyman Joe Nation of Marin County. But long after the Democratic nomination for Senate District 3 is settled, the most significant legacy of this hotly contested primary may be what it does to some of the most well-established principles of California's campaign finance laws. If Migden prevails, she could have an extra $647,000 to pour into the homestretch of her race against Leno and Nation. But to do so, Migden and her attorneys will have to blow up...

SACRAMENTO - California's political watchdog agency has filed a $9 million lawsuit against state Senator Carole Migden, accusing the San Francisco Democrat of consistent and deliberate violations of the state's campaign finance laws. The federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento. It is a response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Migden. In that action, Migden challenged the agency's refusal to let her use $647,000 that she raised while she was in the state Assembly. --snip--

SACRAMENTO -- State Sen. Carole Migden has been fined $350,000 by the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the largest penalty ever levied against a state office candidate, for dozens of violations including failing to disclose seven years' worth of political expenses that she paid with credit cards, the watchdog agency said today. The agency's investigation was prompted in part by a complaint filed last fall by fellow San Francisco Democrat Mark Leno, an Assembly member who is one of two Democrats trying to unseat Migden in the June primary. The agency's initial probe concerned $397,000 in credit card expenses from...

SACRAMENTO - One of the most extensive campaign finance studies in California history showed today that when voters restricted direct contributions to candidates in 2001, donations from special interests flowed around that curb and swelled into an $88 million torrent. The study compiled by the state Fair Political Practices Commission, shows indirect contributions to legislative candidates from special interests surged more than 6,000 percent - from $376,000 to $23.5 million. Indirect donations from wealthy groups to statewide candidates surged more than 5,000 percent to $29.5 million. "The astounding increase in independent expenditures benefiting candidates for state office is clearly thwarting...

With political reform high on his list of second-term priorities, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced the appointment of James “Ross” Johnson as chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission, an agency meant to provide fair, impartial interpretation and enforcement of political campaign, lobbying and conflict of interest laws. Johnson, 67, whom the governor called “a great advocate of political reform,” represented Orange County in the state Legislature for 26 years — in the Assembly from 1978 to 1995, and in the state Senate from 1995 to 2004 — and was the first person to serve as a party leader in...