Everyone can probably agree about two things in our various justice systems: Verdicts ought to be correct, certainly. But they also ought to be reasonably swift.
Even for politicians, right? No use dragging it out.
But an analysis by Yue Stella Yu and Jeremia Kimelman of CalMatters — motto, “Nonprofit & Nonpartisan News” — shows that justice for California politicians accused of financial shenanigans with either public or campaign monies is not only not swift — it is in fact “notoriously slow.”
In a piece headlined “Lengthy investigations into California politicians leave voters in the dark,” the reporters show one of the main reasons this is a problem: The inquiries can take so very long that incumbent politicians can be re-elected over and over without the citizenry having a verdict on their conduct to judge them by.
That’s an insult to democracy, and it needs to be fixed.
And it’s the California Fair Political Practices Commission that needs to kick into gear here.
The initial telling anecdote in their story shows the scope of the go-slow problem:
“A $1,044 outing at a glitzy Hollywood nightclub. A $1,316 meal at a Los Angeles steak and seafood restaurant. A $4,500 experience to see the L.A. Dodgers. Isaac Galvan paid for them all — with campaign cash, a state probe found.
“In his nine years on the Compton City Council, Galvan frequently spent campaign donations for personal purposes, kept shoddy financial records and repeatedly failed to disclose donors and expenditures accurately and on time, if at all, the California Fair Political Practices Commission concluded in its investigation.
“But the probe lasted six years — so long that voters reelected Galvan twice and he left office before those violations were publicized in July 2022.”
“What took them so long?” asked lifelong Compton resident Gilda Blueford, who only learned of Galvan’s campaign finance violations from CalMatters. “If we could have known what was going on … perhaps he would not have been re-elected.”
You think?
It’s not that the appointed commission, which has policed California politicians’ financial and ethical violations for half a century after it was created in 1974 following the Watergate scandal, is purposely foot-dragging, as such. Alleged violations wax and wane, and it can be hard, or financially impossible, to staff up quickly to meet the demand.
But CalMatters reports that the “backlog was an open secret among staffers and commissioners, with some senior counsels arguing in 2022 the problem had existed for ‘at least 20 years.’”
It’s also not the case that anything like the majority of cases take anywhere near as long as the Compton councilman’s extension of the ability to graft and grift along while in office: “Among cases resolved between 2017 and 2023, 15% took more than two years to close, with the longest lasting almost seven years.”
And current commission Chair Adam E. Silver says that the group, recognizing the problem, has mandated a 75% reduction in cases opened before 2023, “causing the backlog to plunge.”
“So long as that continues, then I would say the problem of cases building up and having a ‘backlog’ that grows and grows and grows, that’s resolved,” he said.
We don’t want to be churlish and seem as if we’re trying to have it both ways. But it has to be noted with interest that critics say the new policy may have forced the hand of the FPPC into becoming too lenient with electeds in a rush to get rid of that backlog. “Last year, the commission issued the lowest dollar amount of penalties and the highest percentage of warning letters — a method reserved for low-level offenses with minimal public harm — in the past decade,” CalMatters reports. “Four in five cases where violations were found resulted in a letter.”
Sean McMorris, transparency, ethics, and accountability manager at California Common Cause, says: “The answer is not less enforcement or diminished fines. The answer is more person power to enforce the law adequately.”
Do Californians want to make ethics-violation policing quicker and better? If we do, then we need to ask our Legislature and governor to prioritize the FPPC in the state budget, adding more resources so the commission can do its job.
