SACRAMENTO — Since a shift in enforcement policy last year, more than a dozen elected state officials, including leaders of the Legislature and Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, have been quietly let off the hook for some violations of campaign finance laws, receiving warning letters instead of publicly announced fines.
After he took the reins of the Fair Political Practices Commission last year, former legislator Ross Johnson said he was shifting the agency's focus to have prosecutors settle with warnings cases that they deemed minor and inadvertent. The shift enables the agency to concentrate on more serious violators, Johnson said.
That makes sense to some government experts, including John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
"If you spend all your time going after minnows," Pitney said, "you won't be able to go after any whales."
But some watchdog groups see reasons for concern. For one, it's harder for the public to learn about violations when they are resolved with warnings.
The FPPC posts on its monthly agendas the details of cases resulting in fines, which require commissioners' approval. The postings enable members of the public to learn who was fined, for how much and for what violation. But most cases now result in warning letters that are routinely not made public.
The Times submitted a Public Records Act request for copies of warning letters issued since the policy took effect, but more than a month elapsed before the agency provided them all.
Warnings were sent to campaign committees for Senate Minority Leader Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto) and Senate President Pro Tem-elect Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), as well as a group with ties to Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland).
The attorney general's campaign committee received a warning letter for failing to disclose details of payments to subcontractors.
Cogdill received a warning letter for seven violations, including failing to disclose late contributions, neglecting to electronically report some fundraising and accepting contributions that exceeded state limits. Yet the FPPC considered his case appropriate for a warning under the new policy, and Chief Investigator Sue Straine notified Cogdill that he would not be penalized.
"Neither you nor your committee has a history of violating the Political Reform Act," she wrote.
