SACRAMENTO -- — The California Senate offers special interests that give money to its charity the opportunity to travel with state lawmakers to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Tokyo and other foreign locales.
The Senate uses its staff -- paid by taxpayers -- to help make travel plans for the contributors, some donors said. The donors are mostly corporate interests with business before the Legislature who get federal tax deductions for their contributions.
Government ethics experts say the arrangement is inappropriate.
From 2004 through 2007, 12 of 18 foreign trips for lawmakers that were coordinated by the Senate included lobbyists or other representatives of companies that donated at least $2,000 each to the Senate's California International Relations Foundation, according to Senate records.
That charity pays for meals, gifts and other costs of entertaining foreign delegations that visit the state Capitol and helps fund an exchange of California and Japanese high school students.
Donors who gave $2,000 -- the amount was raised to $3,000 this year -- or more got seats on the foundation's board of directors. The board's 23 directors, or alternates of their choosing, are invited to join the Senate delegations overseas, paying their own way, said Ezilda Samoville, director of the Senate Office of International Relations and the foundation.
The main benefit of having such a foundation board is that "we don't have to do any fundraisers," said Samoville, who added that the foundation received $52,260 in donations last year.
Carol Scott, a former member of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the state ethics watchdog agency, said the Senate should not help lobbyists and other representatives of special interests join the state delegations.
Foreign trips are important to educate legislators, she said, "but they should not be an opportunity for informal lobbying by special interests."
Experts on nonprofit organizations say the Senate's foundation may not deserve its status as a 501(c)(3) organization, named for the tax code section that makes the entity exempt from federal taxes and permits contributors to claim deductions. The Senate's foundation shares the status with organizations such as homeless shelters, the United Way and the American Red Cross and is not required to name its donors.
