Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got the all-clear last week from the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission on an ethics charge that has been hanging over his head since 2005.
It could have been worse. Last year, former Gov. Gray Davis was fined $4,950 by the FPPC for failing to report contributions to his 2003 recall campaign.
It only took four years to close Schwarzenegger’s case, which involved a financial agreement the former bodybuilder had with the publisher of some muscle magazines. That’s compared to five years for Davis, so there’s improvement, of a sort. But with more 2005 cases still in the pipeline, justice still isn’t necessarily swift at the state’s ethics watchdog agency.
Roman Porter, the FPPC’s executive director, doesn’t deny there’s a problem but insists things are getting better.
“We’re making significant progress on the backlog,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve reduced the complaints coming in the front door and are becoming more efficient at dealing with the complaints we have.”
One way the FPPC has cut down on the number of complaints is by calling for sworn filings, made under penalty of perjury. That’s eliminated much of the tit-for-tat campaign nonsense that in the past has seen politicians use the complaints as an easy source of hit piece mailings.
In return, however, the commission now promises that anyone who files a sworn complaint will be told within 14 days whether FPPC will investigate it.
Just as important, the target of a complaint will get a copy of the filing within three days, Porter said. In the past, it could take months before any decision was made to investigate and timely notification was iffy.
Under commission Chair Ross Johnson, a former GOP legislator who took over in 2007, there’s been a growing emphasis on resolving the cases while they still mean something.
Time means everything when it comes to many ethics cases.
Let’s say a politician in a tight-fought race takes big contributions from some none-too-savory special interests and doesn’t report them. Not only can’t his opponent point fingers at the source of the cash during the campaign, but the unreported money also gets used for ads bashing the opposition.
If a candidate knows it’s going to be three or four years before he’s called to task by the FPPC, well, that’s a lifetime in politics. If that unreported cash can help win an election, the guilty politician can be in and out of office before a ruling comes down.
It’s a different story when things move quickly, however.
In July 2007, San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno filed a sworn FPPC complaint against state Sen. Carole Migden, charging that she was playing fast and loose with state campaign finance regulations.
In March 2008 the FPPC fined Migden $350,000 for campaign spending and disclosure violations. That gave Leno, who was challenging Migden in the June Democratic primary, three months to bash his opponent with the ethics panels ruling.
It worked and it’s now state Sen. Mark Leno. But if the commission hadn’t ruled until after the June primary, the result could have been very different.
While eliminating the backlog of cases – currently 569 in various stages of action – is a work in progress, the FPPC is succeeding in making its work more transparent.
While fines assessed by the commission always have been public record, the FPPC is now posting copies of the warning letters it sends out on the enforcement section of its web site.
The warning letters typically tell a politician or committee that while there’s enough information to prove an ethics violation, it’s not worth assessing a fine – this time.
The decision to post those warning letters has brought howls from the California Political Attorneys Association, which represent people charged with violations. That’s a likely sign that the FPPC is on the right track.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.