This past year, city politicians in Anaheim offered up a clinic on how to clean up a city hall.
Largely by avoiding it.
Yet paying attention to what the local elected class fought during the year offers key insights into what goes into a clean city hall.
It’s something for residents to consider for the New Year – especially after a civic awakening of sorts, which saw scores of residents and different activist groups band together and demand reforms in Anaheim.
It comes in a city where investigators allege high-level Anaheim officials were on board to keep as much as $100 million out of the general fund once resort bonds are paid off in a town where nearly half of the residents are on a public health plan.
[Read: How Disneyland Resort Interests Planned to Withhold Tax Money from Anaheim’s Working Class]
Investigators say the plan, spearheaded by the Chamber of Commerce, was presented in a secret December 2020 retreat attended by at least two council members, lobbyists, disgraced former Mayor Harry Sidhu and Disney’s chief representative to city hall – Carrie Nocella.
Restricting Officials From Voting on Projects Connected to Donors
Right from the outset of the scandal arising out of an explosive FBI affidavit detailing how Disneyland resort interests exert undue influence at city hall, Anaheim City Council members were challenged to reign in campaign spending by special interests.
In Anaheim, those interests overwhelmingly dominate local campaigns by flooding mailboxes and social media during elections, helping them consistently elect politicians who lean heavily their way.
The biggest spenders in the city?
Political action committees financially supported by the resort – especially Disney.
[Read: Will Mickey Mouse Continue to Cast a Big Shadow Over Anaheim’s Election Campaigns?]
Right after the FBI corruption probe was first made public, many residents demanded city council members to adopt restrictions on support from political action committees.
Now, that presents constitutional challenges no doubt as restrictions can infringe on people’s – and corporations like Disney – ability to freely express their political opinions as protected by our cherished First Amendment.
However, Anaheim’s city attorney made it pretty clear from the outset that while city officials can’t restrict people from donating to campaigns, they can restrict officials from voting on projects where they have received support.
Despite that, Anaheim skipped any kind of campaign finance reform since the scandal kicked off in May 2022 – instead kicking it several times, this most recent time to next year.
[Read: What Could Campaign Finance Reform Look Like in Two OC Cities?]
A simple, constitutionally consistent reform is restricting officials from voting for projects that benefit their donors for a certain period of time – like a year after receiving the financial support.
So far, city council members have resisted it like a choke hold.
That says everything the public needs to do about how effective that kind of reform could be.
Implementing Gift Bans
Another key reform – already in place at the County of Orange – is to not allow city officials or local politicians to accept any gifts from those doing business with the government.
County officials are under a $5 threshold, which pretty much keeps them to a cup of coffee.
Shirley Grindle, a principal author of the county’s 1978 campaign ordinance known as TIN CUP, earlier this year told Anaheim city council members that kind of reform would go a long way toward cleaning up city hall because it prompts an open government culture.
Yet judging from how much Anaheim city council members love their thousands of dollars in free tickets to Angels games and events at the Honda Center, it’s pretty clear that the freebies have an impact.
[Read: Anaheim’s Free Tickets Increasingly Go to Nonprofits, But Insiders Still Benefit]
Monitoring Public Calendars
One of the only reforms that all Anaheim city council members seemed open to adopting this last year was publishing their calendars, showing who they meet with.
[Read: Anaheim Officials to Publicly Post Online Who They Meet With]
Yet with calendars, the main challenge is to have politicians actually fully fill out who they are meeting with.
Making calendars public is something that no local city hall or the county supervisors do.
That tells you again that there’s something to that.
Registering Lobbyists
It’s not just tracking who city council members meet with to have an idea of influence peddling at your local city hall.
Keeping an eye on paid, professional advocates and who they meet with can give the public a really good idea of what’s coming down the pike at city hall.
That’s why Anaheim officials fought increasing registration requirements at city hall all year.
One of the few reforms adopted – yet to be implemented – is requiring any employee of a company whose job includes the influencing of officials to register as a lobbyist.
By most accounts that will likely apply to Disney’s governmental relations head – Carrie Nocella – at Anaheim City Hall in the New Year.
It would be the first time Disney has had to register a lobbyist in the city.
[Read: Disney’s Representative Could Soon be Considered a Lobbyist at Anaheim City Hall]
Tracking Public Cell Phones
An interesting twist that appeared in the wake of the FBI corruption probe in Anaheim was the use of private cell phones by city officials – like Public Information Officer Mike Lyster.
When city-hired independent investigators wanted to find out what was really happening at Anaheim city hall, they asked to see Lyster’s text messages and inspect his cellphone records.
He refused.
City council members later that year adopted a rule that city employees had to start using cell phones publicly issued so when questions about city communications came up, it would be possible to measure what’s actually happening.
[Read: Anaheim Tightens Electronic Device Policy After Probe Finds Disregard for Records Law]
While council members voted to approve the restriction, the use of personal cell phones seems to continue.
Voice of OC this month asked for a record of text messages between Lyster and a city council member Natalie Rubalcava after he sent a statement on behalf of Rubalcava to questions about her private life, in this case the termination of her employment with State Assemblyman Avelino Valencia.
[Read: Anaheim City Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava Quietly Out as State Assemblyman’s District Director]
We’ll have to wait until the New Year to see if the public really has access to those conversations.
Fueling Ethics Watchdogs
In one of their last meetings, Anaheim city council members did agree to appoint an ethics watchdog – someone who could keep track of lobbyist registrations, public record requests and campaign finance filings.
[Read: Can an Ethics Officer Restore Trust in Anaheim After the FBI Corruption Scandal?]
Yet unlike the County of Orange, where the ethics watchdog comes under a commission appointed by supervisors, Anaheim kept their ethics watchdog on a leash held by the city attorney’s office.
Anaheim city politicians resisted any effort to create a commission, ostensibly terrified by the potential of a political debate – much less the oversight – that one could trigger.
While Politicians Sleep, Residents Wake Up
While a majority of Anaheim City Council members were largely resistant – or downright against – many reforms, young people and various activist groups like OCCORD and Chispa have been coalescing to demand changes at City Hall.
OCCORD, or Orange County Communities for Responsible Development, held a series of town halls after the city-commissioned corruption report was released over the summer.
[Read: Can Anaheim Residents Really Turn Their City Hall Around?]
Throughout three panels, OCCORD gave a rundown on major findings in the corruption report – with residents like Cynthia Ward and Jeanine Robbins, along with former elected officials Tom Tait, Denise Barnes and Jose Moreno giving their insights on City Hall and how it could be fixed.
The entire city council was invited to the panels but only Councilwoman Norma Campos Kurtz showed up.
The nonprofit also conducted an online survey amid the town hall sessions to get input on the type of changes and reforms residents want to see happen at city hall.
Read the findings of the survey and a report on the sessions here.
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