Misleading Orange County (CA) Ethics Initiative

According to an editorial in the Orange County (CA) Register this week, Orange County citizens will soon vote on an initiative that would make their county the second one to turn its campaign finance program over to the state's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). But the initiative's wording calls the FPPC "the ethics commission," which causes confusion, because many in the county, including a recent grand jury (see my blog post on this) as well as past grand juries, have called for a local ethics commission to be formed.

The editorial points out that the initiative's language is misleading, because ethics commissions — and there are many good ones in California — do far more than enforce campaign finance laws.

In fact, it appears that the FPPC isn't do much enforcing of the campaign finance laws of its first local government, San Bernardino County. According to the editorial, San Bernardino County's "two-year contract authorized the FPPC to bill up to $493,296 for purposes of enforcing San Bernardino’s campaign finance law. However, 13 months into the contract, the FPPC had billed the county little more than $9,000."

In any event, the editorial correctly points out that handing the job over to the FPPC is likely to prevent the establishment of a local government ethics program, which the editors support. Therefore, the editors (as well as other good government advocates) are put in the position of having to oppose an initiative that would give the county better campaign finance oversight.

It is possible that a state agency could do a better job with such a data-driven aspect of government ethics. But an independent local program should be first given the chance to run it and, if it feels it would be more efficient to do it at the state level, then everyone would support the change.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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