By Dan Walters : calmatters – excerpt
California’s local officials routinely use taxpayer dollars for ballot measure campaigns, even though it’s illegal. One agency just got fined.
Four of the 12 measures on California’s November ballot were placed there by the Legislature.
Let’s assume that legislators had also appropriated $100 million in taxpayers’ money for campaigns to persuade voters to approve the four. It would have been an outrageous and likely illegal misappropriation of public funds under several laws…
The only agency that even expresses interest is the state Fair Political Practices Commission, because anyone who spends money on political campaigns is supposed to file reports on their activities.
Occasionally, the FPPC has penalized miscreant local agencies, the latest being Los Angeles County, which in 2017 spent a million dollars for an ill-disguised campaign to pass Measure H, a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax..
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association complained about the use of public funds, but as usual, the county’s district attorney refused to investigate. The organization filed a lawsuit and complained to the FPPC.
Last week, it was announced that county officials had agreed to a settlement — without admitting liability — and a $1.35 million penalty...
Using public funds to pass ballot measures is also illegal at the local level. Government Code Section 54964,..(more)
In San Francisco we have the FBI investigating various illegal uses of public employees time and public funds being funneled through community benefits programs and non-profits. It turns out the community that is benefiting from these programs is a very elite community comprised of friends of the City Family that doles out the contracts to a limited few supporters of the City Family program.
It took the FBI years of investigating to bring charges on actions that city authorities turned a blind eye to for decades. The best we can do is recommend some reading of the Marina Times articles that are covering the minute details of the cases as they unfold, starting with “Friends with Community Benefits“, by Susan Dyer Reynolds.