Ethics dilemma

Fate of campaign watchdog now up to two of the city's most aggressive fundraisers

By Joe Dignan

The future course of the body charged with keeping San Francisco's politicians honest is likely to be determined in the next few months as two of the five seats on the city's Ethics Commission come up for reappointment.

Commissioner Michele Anglade has told her colleagues she is moving to Florida and her last meeting will be Dec. 19. The term of Waukeen McCoy, a Willie Brown appointee who serves as the commission's vice chair, ends Feb. 1.

Mayor Gavin Newsom may either replace McCoy or reappoint him for another term. City Attorney Dennis Herrera gets to choose a replacement for Anglade. McCoy told the Bay Guardian he wants Herrera to appoint him to Anglade's seat and then for Newsom to pick a new commissioner.

Anglade and McCoy have been relatively conservative commissioners who often support the recommendations of staff. Two other commissioners – the newly appointed Eileen Hansen and former Ethics Commission staffer Joe Lynn – have nudged the commission toward becoming more proactive and aggressive. Commission chair Emi Gusukuma has often been a swing vote between the two camps.

The commission registers lobbyists, tracks campaign expenditures, enforces the city's ethics laws, punishes election law violators, and administers the public financing program for supervisorial races.

Critics have long called the commission passive and weak. Newsom and Herrera – two of the city's most prodigious fundraisers – will now determine whether the commission will strengthen the enforcement of campaign finance laws and close loopholes that still allow for stealthy spending during elections.

"The bottom line is that the future of the Ethics Commission is in the city attorney's hands," Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin told us.

Open deliberations are central to the reformists' agenda for the commission. Hearings on campaign violations are held behind closed doors, and investigation documents remain confidential. Lynn and Hansen want to open the commission's investigations to public view, but McCoy doesn't.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi wants the commission to do at least some of its work in the public view and said its enforcement powers should be strengthened. "Ethics should be treated with the same seriousness as the court system," he said.

For example, Mirkarimi has been pressing for full disclosure from the investigation into how Pacific Gas and Electric Co. illegally dumped $800,000 into the 2002 campaign to defeat Proposition J, which would have brought public power to San Francisco (Mirkarimi ran the Prop. J. campaign). The contribution was reported long after Election Day and was therefore shielded from voter scrutiny. Campaign attorney Jim Sutton and his former firm faced potential fines of $2.4 million but were instead last year fined $240,000 because the commission agreed with Sutton's contention that the failure to promptly report the donation was a mistake rather than an intentional deception (see "Repeat Offender," 10/27/04). An open public hearing might have offered more insights into the commission's thinking and justification.

Mirkarimi and other progressives prefer two reformist candidates: Rafael Mandelman and Mary McAllister. Mandelman, 30, sits on the Democratic County Central Committee for state senator Carole Migden and is interested in the job, but he said he hasn't ruled out running for elective office, which commissioners are prohibited from doing. "It would be kind of like going into the nunnery," Mandelman said.

McAllister, 60, who is retired, headed a civil grand jury that was critical of the commission. She's interested in controlling potential conflicts of interest among city employees and officials. But McAllister too has reservations about giving up the work that got her interested in politics to begin with: saving trees on the city's parklands.

The long-underfunded commission got a 31 percent budget increase this year, bumping up its full-time staff to 12, but Hansen has said it's still not enough to do the job. The commission lost a ballot bid in November to get guaranteed set-aside funding and the right to use independent attorneys. Moreover, Hansen said, some politicians and committees continue to ignore requirements that they file timely campaign reports with the commission.

"They aren't afraid of the Ethics Commission," Hansen said. "The violators are saying, 'I don't care about that. The Ethics Commission will negotiate and reduce my fine.'<\!q>"

Perhaps a more public commission would be a more effective commission. "People don't know what we do, or think what we do has no effect," Hansen said. "And I often think they're right." E-mail news@sfbg.com.