By Steven T. Jones

It wasn't about Eileen Hansen or Mike Garcia. It wasn't about "manipulation of a system designed to oversee government with vigor and independence," as a San Francisco Chronicle editorial claimed. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors' Feb. 8 vote to place Hansen on the Ethics Commission was about finally trying to do something to stop the corrosive impacts of big money and stealthy spending on city politics.

"The elephant in the room – as I said to the Chronicle on the day before the vote, and for some reason they didn't print it – was the political consultants and attorneys who were trying to maintain their control over the department," longtime clean-government advocate Charlie Marsteller told the Bay Guardian.

And the biggest elephant of all was campaign attorney Jim Sutton. Sutton has served as treasurer for Mayor Gavin Newsom and a host of downtown-funded candidates and causes, ranging from newbie supervisor Sean Elsbernd (who, along with Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, led the Feb. 8 attacks on Hansen) to secretive issue-advocacy groups like the California Urban Issues Project.

Sutton is widely perceived in the progressive political community from which Hansen comes as a sort of bagman for well-funded candidates, someone who pushes the edges of campaign finance law and as a result has been hit with some of the biggest fines the Ethics Commission has ever levied (see "The Political Puppeteer," 2/4/04).

Sutton disputes the characterization: "I happen to represent some candidates that your constituency opposes," Sutton told us. "I'm just a lawyer, and I represent my clients to the best of my ability."

Yet Hansen wants to get tough with these clients. She sees a qualitative difference between the inadvertent errors made by grassroots political neophytes (such as those she acknowledges she made during her 2002 run for the District 8 seat now held by Sup. Bevan Dufty) and the large expenditures political professionals often make to create distorted pictures of candidates and issues.

"The Ethics Commission has the potential to be a very powerful political tool to create a more fair and equitable process that will benefit everyone in the city," Hansen told us. "That means removing – as much as possible – money from the political debate."

And that's why her nomination was so aggressively attacked by, as she put it, "those forces that are not interested in campaign finance reform."

Her nomination was subjected to unusually strong attacks by the Chronicle (which derided it as nothing but a "power play"), downtown power brokers, and Alioto-Pier, who indignantly called Hansen's nomination "completely and totally inappropriate."

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The Ethics Commission was created 11 years ago to regulate political campaigns and enforce the city's ethics laws, but as Marsteller and other critics note, because of chronic funding shortfalls and the reactive stance taken by then-director Ginny Vida (who retired last year), the agency has functioned more as a passive repository of records than as an active campaign watchdog.

Garcia, the board's appointee to the commission for the past four years, was part of a body that mostly just rubber-stamped Vida's recommendations and presided over such controversial decisions as letting District Attorney Kamala Harris break a spending-cap pledge (see "Campaign Watch," 10/8/03), covering up a secret donation that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. made to help defeat a 2002 public power initiative ("Repeat Offender," 10/27/04), and failing to investigate a document that seemed to show the illegal laundering of funds by the Newsom mayoral campaign (see "Newsom's Funny Money," 2/11/04). Sutton was at the center of each of those incidents.

Still, as Garcia's term expired, he was the only one who responded to an advertisement for the job posted over the holidays in December. But progressive supervisors concerned with rejuvenating the commission recruited Hansen, who was eventually confirmed in a 7-3 vote, with Sups. Elsbernd, Alioto-Pier, and Gerardo Sandoval voting against and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi absent due to a death in the family.

Yet even Sandoval – who said he had long ago pledged his support to Garcia – expressed concern that "there might be something else going on" behind the attacks on Hansen's political background. "Some of the discourse suggests to me that there is more going on here than meets the eye," Sandoval said at the hearing.

Reformers are hailing the vote as a potential turning point for the five-member commission. Hansen is likely to join Commissioner Joe Lynn in pushing to get tougher on big-money violators, with Commissioners Emi Gusukuma and Waukeen McCoy being the likely swing votes on reform issues.

"[Hansen's] budget expertise and field experience are going to be great additions to the commission," Lynn told us, referring to her run for supervisor and work with the People's Budget Collective.

Reformers like Lynn and Marsteller have also been pleased with new executive director John St. Croix, who has been working to put the body in a more proactive position, including fighting Newsom's office to get the commission the resources it needs to meet its mandate.

Newsom is asking the beleaguered agency to cut another $90,000 from its budget, going back to just 8 employees, while St. Croix is seeking an increase of about $230,000 to bring the number of its employees up to 12. Rather than the usual budget tactics of asking for more than you need, St. Croix said he's being honest with what is necessary to deal with enforcement backlogs of up to four years.

"Without this, I don't think we can meet our mandate and deal with these backlogs," St. Croix told us. "Additional staff will ease the pressure, because then we'll be able to do everything we're supposed to do and then become more proactive."

During Hansen's first meeting, on Feb. 14, St. Croix told the commission that he actually believes the department needs 16.5 employees to meet its responsibilities, although he doesn't think he'll get that many during these lean times. But it was a prompt Hansen used to lead a discussion that ultimately directed St. Croix to change the department budget to ask for an additional 2.5 employees (including an additional auditor and investigator and a half-time I.T. person), bringing the request up to 14.5 total employees.

Lynn, who has long been the lone voice pushing for a robust commission, was thrilled. "The chemistry on the commission is just completely different," he told us. "Eileen just added so much. She gives a diplomatic voice to many of the points I've been raising."

Lynn and Hansen also combined at the meeting to elect Gusukuma – a progressive appointed last year by Assessor Mabel Teng – to the chair in a 3-2 vote, with McCoy elected vice chair.

"Ethics is very much at a turning point," observed Marsteller, who attended the long meeting.

Also at the meeting, the commission began tackling the first of a series of key reforms it will face in the coming months when it discussed a landmark proposal by progressive supervisors to require issue-advocacy groups to disclose their donors and expenditures before the election. Such groups targeted progressive incumbent supervisors with nasty hit pieces during the November election. Yet at the urging of Lynn and Hansen, who preferred a stronger measure that includes contribution caps and removing some exemptions, the commission delayed action on the measure until it can be modified.

The commission will also soon begin a charter review that will clarify its mission and the campaign finance rules required of all candidates and committees. And next month, at the request of Mirkarimi, the Board of Supervisors' Audits and Finance Committee will conduct a comprehensive review of the Ethics Commission, its mandate, and what it needs to better do its job, something St. Croix and Lynn both say they welcome.

"I believe that if there is a public airing of these issues that there could be a better understanding of what we do and why it's important," St. Croix said. "I think it's always been an agency that tries to be meaningful, but hasn't always been able to be."

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