2 Fun Public Ethics Commission Meetings next Week!

In 1996 after years of embarrassing pay-to-play schemes and closed-door city council meetings (where council members shopped their items and secured votes out of the public eye), the League of Women Voters finally forced the City Council to vote for a stronger version of the City Sunshine Laws; the City also put in place the Public Ethics Commission.

The Commission is supposed to monitor the new sunshine laws, some of the worst campaign abuses, and provide that city employees make city records available to the public. In addition it was set the task of recommending pay raises for the city council members in order to divorce this function from the council’s political purposes.

Given the gravity of the concerns the Commission oversees, it is sad that the City has seen fit to allocate only a staff of two to assist the seven volunteer Commissioners. Most of what it can do is to recommend further action from the council or other agencies such as the State’s Fair Political Practices Commission.

What, you say, they shift it to another commission?! That seems to be the importance we give to overseeing that actual democracy happens-ship it from one underfunded, underauthorized  agency to another of similar ineffectiveness (not to say that the FPPC is as ineffective as the PEC).

This little known commission will take its place in the spotlight of mayoral politics next week by meeting twice in one week. 

The meeting on March 1^st will cover 2 complaints about how the next mayor’s race is already being run. If I give a good rundown on both of those meetings, you have no excuse but to attend so that you will understand at least how money, the Perata machine, and incumbency might affect how your city will be run in the next few years.

During the regular meeting on Monday, March 1^st, the Commission will hear my complaint, concerning the use of city resources to promote the candidacy of Don Perata for mayor.

My complaint (No. 09-13)stems from the public event hosted by City’s  Neighborhood Services Division which oversees the Neighborhood Watch programs, the Services Coordinators (NSCs), and the Crime Prevention Councils (NCPCs) when the Division promoted by mailing, media, and NCPC listserves, a community meeting to introduce Police Chief Batts to local crime prevention volunteers, otherwise known as frequent Oakland voters.

At the event, Don Perata had been invited to sit in the front of the audience and after the Chief spoke at length and quickly exited, the head of the Oakland Police Officers Association, Dom Arotzarena, got up to speak. Oh, one little detail that baffled me then and still does; for some reason, the event was held in the OPOA’s headquarters not at any of the many city facilities available.

So, Mr. Arotzarena began a little diatribe on what he saw as Oakland’s ills and some of the reasons for its high crime rate.

What, according to Dom Arotzarena, were the causes?

First of all a lack of leadership in City Hall, secondly, a commitment to implement the Consent Decree in the Negotiated Settlement Agreement by which officers are held accountable for racial profiling and abusive treatment of  suspects, and lastly, the subsequent low morale in the department due to the extension of this agreement.

You may recall that during the Jerry Brown years, some officers were discovered to have formed a group called the Rough Riders, or Riders for short. Theses officers planted evidence and beat suspects, most of whom were Black West Oaklanders, and many of them filed suit against the City.

Under City Attorney John Russo, the City settled a giant class action suit and agreed to be monitored by Federal Judge Thelton Henderson until it could prove compliance with the agreement.

Curiously, Mr. Arotzarena never mentioned that it was city leadership, in the form of Mayor Dellums, which hired the new chief they seemed to be promoting or that the police department itself was responsible for the granting of the NSA and its continuation.

Anyway, this little lecture only served as a backdrop for OPOA’s announcement that it was using this publicly convened meeting to endorse their candidate for mayor, Don Perata.

No one was surprised that OPOA would endorse the Don but many in attendance were outraged, and that would include me, that those of us who thought we were attending a city-sponsored meeting, were a somewhat-captive audience for the political speech which followed. I say somewhat-captive, because a whole crew of folks jumped up and left as soon as they realized what was happening.

Jean Quan also got a minute to speak because the community volunteer who is also the chair of the Neighborhood Watch Steering Committee got wind of this OPOA co-option of the meeting at the last minute and invited Jean to come.

I approached OPOA President Arotzarena at the same time as staffers from Dellums’ office descended on him and demanded an explanation for this illegal act. Mr. Arotzarena’s only response was that “this is our house,” referring to the union-owned headquarters.

That this was illegal campaigning has been verified by City Administrator Dan Lindheim and the Commission itself. Mr. Lindheim declares that “it is a violation of city policy and state law to use resources or city work time for political purposes and that OPOA’s…decision to co-opt a city-sponsored community event and use it for political purposes raises serious concerns.”

The Commission cites city and state law that may have been violated, but essentially decides that these violations were “incidental or minimal” and that the Commission does not have jurisdiction anyway. The Commission could have decided that this violation should be forwarded to the State agency, the FPPC but decided against that, too.

The problem is that city employees may not have known about the endorsement; at least not employees of the Neighborhood Services Division, but police officers did. Since they were representing the union at the gathering that makes it hazy (to them).

Of course, the idea that the most powerful union in the City did not know that what they were doing was illegal, is absurd. They decided that they could get away with it and so far they have.

Come to the Commission’s meeting on March 1^st  , 6:30, Hearing Room 1, if you think the Commission should hold a hearing on the use of taxpayers’ money to promote a mayoral candidate. I am asking that the City request reimbursement of these costs from the OPOA for the actual money involved and to prevent a reenactment of such an event.

You will also hear a complaint against Jean Quan (who is my candidate) for apparently having a link from her city council website to her mayoral website.

I have looked for it and can’t find it. Maybe she took it down. If not, she should take it down. Incumbency has many advantages and that shouldn’t be one of them. There are candidates for this office who have neither Perata’s money nor Jean’s automatic connections to the voters.

Back to Don Perata who has already held one of the highest offices in the State of California. He seems to have built a lavish lifestyle out of doing end runs around campaign and ethics laws.

He was under investigation for his deeds by the FBI for years. The investigation was eventually dropped. There are many theories as to why but few clear explanations as to what was found or not found by them.

Now he wants to work his magic on Oakland. There must be more wealth in this town than most of us could guess at for Perata to turn to our city to quench his well-known ambition for more money and more power.

So, this why there will be a second meeting next week of the Oakland Public Ethics Commission. The actual implementation of Ranked Choice Voting which  we voted for four long  years ago, has brought a new kind of lobbying out of the woodwork around City Hall.

It turns out that there are many ways to brunt the effect of ranked choice voting (RCV), and we are beginning to see some of the more creative attempts. Keep your eyes peeled for more.

Oakland City Attorney, John Russo, has suggested to the City Council that the individual limits on campaign donations for city races should be raised to equal the limits on the 2 elections we would have had had we not decided to change the system of money, party, and incumbency  entitlement.

So wait, let’s go over that again. Voters in Oakland decided in a huge percentage that they wanted to level the playing field a bit by instituting a system that offers a chance to lesser-known, lesser-connected community members to run for City office; and now the City Attorney seeks to negate part of our barely instituted system by increasing the ability of moneyed interests to buy the election anyway.

Right now individuals may donate up to $700 per candidate, per campaign, and this would raise that limit to $1400.

Council Member Ignacio de la Fuente (who is also a paid consultant to the Perata campaign) proposed that the City Council okay this measure at the Rules Committee. When he couldn’t get that past the Committee; and since it was supposed to go to the Ethics Commission first anyway, he proposed that the Commission meet as soon as possible in a special session. He commented that this should be determined quickly so that it would not be changing the rules midstream.

But, as we have seen, the campaign season has already begun.

Please consider making your voice heard on March 4^th at City Hall. If you’ve never thought about the Public Ethics Commission before, these two meetings in one week can go a long way to make up for your inattention to this fun government agency and make you forget your post Olympic doldrums at the same time. The real games are just beginning here in Oakland.