By Susan Shelley
Welcome to another exciting episode of everyone’s favorite California government game show, “Why is This Even Legal?!”
Today’s show comes to you live from Los Angeles, where the city motto seems to be, “Crime is a business, but business is a crime.”
Headed for the November ballot is an exciting new initiative sponsored by the Homeless Industrial Complex that aims to slam a giant new tax on high-value real estate sales. The proponents are pitching it as a small tax on mansions, but actually it’s a giant tax on the sale of apartment buildings, shopping centers, office buildings and any real estate valued above $5 million, which in some parts of Los Angeles is almost enough to buy you a three-bedroom fixer.
If you’d like to oppose this tax with more than just a stern look, be prepared to hire a team of professional campaign law compliance experts. You’ll need a treasurer and a lawyer, and a staff of people who will file all the required documents and reports.
In Los Angeles, it’s not enough to report campaign fundraising and campaign spending. The city of L.A. requires that campaign committees — and in California you must have a committee as soon as you raise or spend $2,000 — file a copy of the content of every campaign communication that goes to 200 people or more.
That means every print ad, every phone script, every radio or TV ad, every digital ad, every email blast, every yard sign, every billboard and every social media post.
The city of L.A requires a copy of the script, recording and/or image on the same day that the message goes out, filed electronically with the city’s Ethics Commission. This requirement applies to every city candidate or committee participating in politics.
The liability for getting it wrong adds up fast. “Late penalties of $25 per day, up to $500, apply to required filings,” an Ethics Commission document from 2017 explains. “In addition, a person who violates the City’s campaign finance laws may be subject to an administrative enforcement action and a potential fine of the greater of $5,000 per violation or three times the amount of money at issue.”
If that wasn’t enough to chill you out of participating in local politics, there’s this: “The principal officers of a committee are liable for the actions of their committees.” There’s even a hotline where your political opponents can turn you in.
In the city’s online database of enforcement actions, I found only three cases for “Failure to provide campaign communication,” now Municipal Code Section 49.7.32. In all three, the “violators” signed stipulated agreements waiving their “procedural rights” to challenge the action, the penalties or the law.
In case 2015-11, Lamar Advertising agreed to pay a $10,000 fine for putting up 13 billboards supporting City Council candidates in 2013. The company filed all the required forms for the spending, but four of the jpeg images of the billboards were missing from the electronic filings.
In case 2016-06, Dr. Feliciano Serrano failed to file two “scripts of independent expenditure video communications” on behalf of Wendy Greuel, a candidate for mayor in 2013, and was fined $2,500 for each “violation.”
In case 2015-08, Emanuel Pleitez, also a candidate for mayor in 2013, admitted to “failing to properly maintain documentation for three campaign expenditures, and failing to file copies of eight campaign communications,” and was fined $36,250. The commission agreed to an “extended payment schedule due to financial hardship” after the candidate provided three years of tax returns and bank documents.
If the First Amendment means anything, it means the government can’t take action against people for speaking. That has to mean that the government can’t erect a giant corn maze of regulations on political speech that traps people who are participating in communication activities during a campaign.
Laws like this are part of the larger story of the problem with campaign finance law, which is that it has evolved into an incumbent-protection racket. It can’t get any more obvious than a government requirement for everyone in politics to report to the government on virtually every word that is said in a campaign.
Why is this even legal? Somebody’s going to have to fight it to find out.
Write to Susan at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley.
This column was originally published by the Southern California News Group.