A long-awaited debate on what, if any, campaign finance reforms Anaheim officials could make to curb the influence of special interests who helped get them into office is expected to take place Tuesday in the continued fallout of one of OC’s largest corruption scandals.
The Fall of Reform
Corruption probes in Anaheim are triggering tough ethics discussions across OC and Southern California. Will reform follow?
Questions are popping up about what those campaign finance reforms should actually look like in Anaheim, a city home to Disneyland resort interests that routinely spends largely in local elections and often sees their backed candidates land a seat on the city council.
[Read: Will Disney Backed Anaheim Officials Limit Mickey Mouse’s Influence on Local Elections?]
Tuesday’s expected discussion comes months after independent investigators – with decades of law enforcement – in a corruption report echoed what FBI agents in sworn affidavits concluded last year:
Anaheim city hall is essentially controlled by lobbyists and Disneyland resort interests.
Keeping Independent Expenditures in Check
Activists argue that large independent expenditures from special interests like Disney leave elected officials beholden to contributors and not residents despite city council members publicly pushing back that notion.
Shirley Grindle, a resident who authored the county’s own campaign finance ordinance in 1978 that was later adopted by Anaheim, said in a phone interview earlier this month independent expenditures pose a real problem in all elections.
“Particularly in Anaheim, because of The Walt Disney Company and the big hotel owners,” she said. “It’s perfectly legal. They’re spending $1 to $2 million to get a council person elected. I wish Disney would just back out of the elections.”
She said Disney doesn’t need to buy council members because most officials would probably support reasonable requests from the company.
Last year, efforts to enact campaign finance reform measures that would have instituted a 12-month recusal window on elected officals from voting on items that could benefit contributors who donated $250 or more to their campaigns failed.
It would have also included independent expenditures by political action committees.
At the time, City Attorney Rob Fabela publicly stated that the U.S. Supreme Court allows governing bodies to restrict when an official can vote on an action that impacts a campaign donor, and said it likely could apply to political action committee spending.
“If a council decides to restrict itself on when it can vote and not vote, that has been approved by the US Supreme Court,” he said at a meeting on June 7, 2023.
“It would not shock me if someone came up with an argument that the First Amendment rights of those contributing to independent expenditures for candidates – somehow their First Amendment rights are being violated. But I think it’s defensible.”
[Read: Will Anaheim Limit Disneyland Resort Industry’s Influence Following FBI Corruption Probe?
Grindle said that city council members can try to make it apply to independent expenditures and see what happens if they get sued – adding that it has a 50/50 shot at holding up in court.
“Nobody knows whether it’s really legal to do that,” she said, adding that she wasn’t taking a position on that reform proposal.
“If someone sues, they’ll get an answer – a court answer.”
People like Ely Flores, director of the nonprofit Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development, want to see that type of recusal policy.
At the same time, Flores acknowledged in an interview earlier this month that the city can’t stop political action committees from participating in elections and supporting candidates.
“But we can push for those elected officials to have stronger ethical principles on what they vote and don’t vote on when it comes time for these PACs and folks that have contributed to these PACs to bring agenda items to the city,” he said.
At a September forum hosted by OCCORD, former Mayor Tom Tait proposed listing campaign donors and political action committee spending on agenda items impacting those interests so residents can easily see who backed council members ahead of the vote.
“Transparency is the best disinfectant,” he said.
A Gift Ban
Grindle said the current ordinance she wrote is constitutional and fair, but officials should implement a gift ban – a policy she helped the county institute in the 90s.
“Nobody gives gifts to the City Council or the Board of Supervisors because they like them. It’s because they control votes,” she said. “If the City Council of Anaheim wanted to really cut out the influence, adopt a gift ban.”
Grindle has audited campaign finance statements in Anaheim on her own to ensure people were playing by the rules since the city adopted the ordinance.
She says she is the only one doing it in Anaheim and the city needs to create an ethics commission – like they did at the county level – to take over the role.
“It’s time for them to start auditing the campaign reports and enforcing this,” Grindle said, adding that Fabela hasn’t done a good job of enforcing the rules.
Last month, Anaheim city officials voted to create an ethics officer position.
At that meeting, some of the Disney-backed city council members spoke against also having an ethics commission.
Fall of Reform
Tuesday’s debate is a culmination of a host of reform proposals called for by Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava this fall in the wake of a corruption scandal.
[Read: Is Anaheim’s Fall of Reform Going to Freeze Over?]
The campaign donation reform debate was expected to take place on Nov. 7 but City Spokesman Mike Lyster told the Voice of OC in an email it was kicked to Nov. 28 because the city is bringing in a “subject matter expert” who was unavailable earlier.
When asked three times by the Voice of OC who the expert was, Lyster refused to name one.
“We don’t have any updates to share at this time as we want to respect that there can always be changes before an agenda is published or before a meeting itself. We welcome you review the agenda, expected on Nov. 22, and to tune into the Nov. 28 meeting,” he wrote in an email earlier this month.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.