Faster Fund-Raising Disclosure Urged

SACRAMENTO — In late July, when bills affecting pharmacies, beverage manufacturers and other interests were sailing through the Legislature, Gov. Gray Davis held an intimate fund-raiser in San Francisco attended by officials from the Rite Aid Corp., soft drink companies and other businesses.

But how many political dollars he collected at that North Beach dinner and who gave them will not be disclosed until next year.

Weeks after the event, Davis flew to Palm Desert for another money-raising meal, this time with prominent figures in the horse racing business who were pushing for expansion of off-track betting. How much they forked over at dinner will be secret until January.

In the final days of the legislative session, when the Assembly Appropriations Committee was making life-and-death decisions on hundreds of bills, its chairwoman held a fund-raising breakfast in a lobbyist’s office across the street. How much Assemblywoman Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) piled on her political plate that morning will not be known until October.

“It’s a ridiculous situation,” said Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley businessman who is co-sponsoring a campaign financing reform initiative that he hopes to get on the March 2000 ballot. “Somebody could write Gray Davis a check for $1 million in July and it would not be disclosed until January, long after the context in which it was given is forgotten.”

In the new era of year-round, big-bucks fund-raising, California’s decades-old campaign financing law, reformers say, is woefully out of step.

Secretary of State Bill Jones, the state’s chief election officer, acknowledged that disclosure is too infrequent. He said the semiannual reporting requirements for off-election years were established in an era when fund-raising at such times was rare.

“I don’t think when we originally passed campaign financing laws,” he said, “that anyone ever expected the numbers and dollars in off-years to be raised to this level.”

In the first half of the year, Davis collected $6.3 million, or about $1 million a month. In the same time, the Assembly speaker and the Senate president pro tem each raised about $2 million.

Since June 30, the end of the last reporting period, legislators and the governor have continued to hold money-raising events. For legislators, the fund-raising fever reached a peak in the final weeks of the legislative session, when dozens of events were scheduled each night. The session ended Sept. 10.

But the public will not know who gave to many of their elected representatives and how much until January--the next reporting deadline for officeholders such as the governor. Others, who will be candidates in 2000, will report in October.

“We seemed to have entered a new phase of American politics where politicians believe they need to raise money endlessly,” said David Magleby, political science department chairman at Brigham Young University, “and in some instances in much larger amounts than we’ve seen for a very long time.”

The fund-raising frenzy stretches across the country, he said, where the close race for control of Congress and reapportionment has increased the stakes for both political parties. “So what Gov. Davis is doing,” he said, “is part of a broader mosaic.”

As moneyed interests give larger and more frequent contributions, Magleby said, a minimal solution is electronic disclosure--requiring politicians to report donations via computer at least once a month and post them on the Internet.

Jones, who conducted a three-year crusade to persuade legislators that contributions should be disclosed on the Internet, said that pushing for more frequent disclosure will be his next goal.

By early next year, he said, his office will have completed the installation of computer equipment that will make it possible to quickly post contribution reports on the Web.

Davis’ campaign manager, Garry South, said he would support reform of disclosure requirements particularly since computers have made filing reports quicker and easier.

“I think that’s an idea who’s time has probably come,” he said. “My personal view . . . is that full and frequent disclosure is ultimately probably about the best you can do in terms of reforming the campaign finance system in a way that is fair and equitable to all involved.”

He said Davis was one of the few candidates who voluntarily posted his contributions on the Web in the last election. “We didn’t feel we had anything to hide and that there was no need to . . . make it difficult for reporters or other interested parties to find where our money was coming from,” he said.

But he said the governor has no plans to voluntarily increase the frequency of his disclosures.

To those who have criticized Davis for his prodigious fund-raising efforts during an off-election year, South insisted that the governor had been able to separate his money gathering from his policymaking duties.

“I would urge people to view this administration and view the governor’s actions in terms of the policy decisions that are made over the long term,” he said, “rather than who he had dinner with on any given night.”

Migden also maintained that there was no relationship between her actions as a committee chairwoman and the breakfast fund-raiser, although it had initially been scheduled for the hour before one of her committee’s final meetings. The invitation to the money-giving event also noted prominently that she was “chairwoman of the appropriations committee.”

Unz said his initiative requires disclosure over the Internet within 24 hours of all contributions of $1,000 or more. He said it also establishes fund-raising blackout periods.

“None of this fund-raising would be going on right now under my proposal,” he said.

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Off-Year Income

State officeholders have collected millions of dollars in campaign contributions even though this is not an election year. Under California law, most of them are only required to disclose their collections every six months. Here is a sampling of what some raised in the first six months of 1999.

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Official Office Contributions Gray Davis Governor $6.3 million John Burton Senate President Pro Tem $2.1 million (D-San Francisco) Antonio Villaraigosa Assembly Speaker $1.8 million (D-Los Angeles) Robert Hertzberg Assemblyman $853,896 (D-Sherman Oaks) Betty Karnette Senator $449,120 (D-Long Beach) James Battin Assemblyman $389,043 (R-La Quinta) Scott Baugh Assembly Minority Leader $310,750 (R-Huntington Beach) Fred Keeley Assemblyman $284,303 (D-Boulder Creek) Tony Cardenas Assemblyman $226,250 (D-Sylmar)

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Source: California secretary of state