Turlock initiative plan for campaign money rules stalls

An initiative drive launched Tuesday to curb the influence of campaign donors on City Hall apparently folded Saturday before any signatures were gathered.

Three former City Council members had announced Tuesday that their proposed Tin Cup initiative would battle a perception of favoritism bought with hefty campaign donations.

By Friday – after The Modesto Bee had conducted interviews and prepared a report to be published Sunday – two of the three said they had misgivings. On Saturday afternoon, former Councilman Ron Hillberg said in an email that the initiative will be withdrawn Monday because of a legal weakness, and to give City Council members a chance to address reform by their self-imposed deadline of June 28.

The other initiative proponents – former Mayor Brad Bates and former Councilwoman Mary Jackson – could not immediately be reached for comment, although Bates contacted The Bee on his own through an email.

All three had sided with the nonprofit Turlock Certified Farmers Market in its bruising competition with for-profit contender Peter Cipponeri earlier this year. Nonprofit supporters had noted that Cipponeri or his relatives had contributed significant sums to the political campaigns of all council members.

In particular, Turlock Mayor Gary Soiseth received $12,000 from Cipponeri’s father-in-law, businessman Matt Swanson, whose companies also had spread $10,300 among the four other council members since 2010.

Hillberg, Bates and Jackson were gung-ho as late as Thursday about their initiative, which would prevent a city leader from voting on an item affecting a major donor. Initiative wording defined that as someone contributing $1,000 or more to a candidate in the previous four years, while saying nothing of Swanson or developers who donated generously to candidates in years past.

“We’re just trying to eliminate perceptions that the City Council is not acting on its own in the decision-making process,” said Hillberg, who left the council 20 years ago. “We’ve lost a lot of confidence in government. It would be nice to get some of it back.”

On Friday – after The Bee had interviewed Soiseth and others, and put in a call to Swanson, which was not returned – Hillberg said he never intended to draw connections between the initiative and Swanson. Swanson was subjected to unfair treatment in the farmers market flap, Hillberg said.

In an email Saturday, Bates said he “will personally be extremely cautious in inferring any motive or intent to anyone individually involved and focus entirely on the proposed ordinances.”

“This isn’t about the farmers market,” Jackson said Friday. “The farmers market was the tipping point. The way the public was treated, with the mayor and council majority ignoring public opinion – enough is enough. ‘If you cannot do the right thing, we’re going to put this (initiative) into law.’ ”

The initiative was to be called TIN CUP, for Time Is Now, Clean Up Politics – the same title Modesto used when its ordinance was adopted three decades ago; its donation cap now is $3,000 over four years. Supporters of the Turlock initiative would have had six months to gather the signatures of 10 percent of Turlock’s registered voters, or about 2,900. Then the council would have had to either adopt its provisions or call a citywide election.

Hillberg, an attorney, said in his Saturday email, “After further legal review, the current proposal attempted to be retroactive to cover any contributions in the last four years. That makes the ordinance much more likely to be challenged in court, at substantial cost to the city. We do not want to put the city in that position.”

The nonprofit Turlock market ultimately withdrew from competing for control of the downtown site it had nurtured for five years, and relocated to the nearby Stanislaus County Fairground. The council majority approved a contract with Cipponeri downtown, and the markets have competed in recent weeks.

A Bee analysis of campaign contributions and dates suggests that if provisions of the Tin Cup proposal had been in place in the spring, the outcome probably would have been no different.

Cipponeri had given $900 in political money to Soiseth – less than the proposed $1,000 cap. Cipponeri’s father, Sebastian, had given the mayor $1,500, but Cipponeri repeatedly said his parents were not involved in his venture of running farmers markets.

Although the initiative would address money from a donor and his or her immediate family, Swanson’s generosity with candidates would not count against an in-law such as Cipponeri and no council member would have had a conflict of interest regarding Swanson on the farmers market vote. However, Soiseth might have had to step aside because of 2014 contributions he received from nonprofit market supporters.

It appears that another recent council vote involving Swanson, however, could have been affected by such an initiative, because all council members would have been ineligible to vote.

ACE Valet vote questioned

The council on May 10 unanimously gave another Swanson business, ACE Valet, a license to operate on a public street, parking vehicles downtown for people willing to pay $5. In the previous four years, Soiseth’s $12,000 from Swanson far exceeded the proposed initiative limit of $1,000; Swanson also gave $3,300 to Amy Bublak, $2,500 to Bill DeHart, $2,000 to Matthew Jacob and $1,000 to Steven Nascimento.

Soiseth announced in his 2014 campaign that he would accept contributions of no more than $1,500 from individuals and $3,000 from businesses. In February, the mayor said he did not violate self-imposed limits because he sees Swanson’s companies as separate entities and because the donations were made for separate campaigns; half came after his election, although he hasn’t disclosed his next political move.

State enforcers of campaign finance laws, however, saw things differently in another case involving Swanson, but not Soiseth.

In March, the California Fair Political Practices Commission attributed money coming from Associated Feed and from Prospector LLC as Swanson’s, “because Swanson directed and controlled the contributions of his two companies.” The agency in that ruling fined former state legislator Tony Strickland, who ran for state controller in 2010, $80,000 for funneling money from Swanson and other contributors through Republican central committees in Stanislaus and Ventura counties to get around campaign limits in statewide races; the Stanislaus committee also was fined $10,000.

Nascimento had tried to bring Tin Cup rules to Turlock in early 2014, before Soiseth was elected, but others on the council said integrity would prompt them to step aside should conflicts arise. A compromise featured posting candidates’ campaign finance forms on the city’s website, but didn’t address leaders voting on issues affecting major donors.

Competing drives

Earlier this year, Nascimento said the council should revisit campaign finance rules when the dust settled from the farmers market tussle. Soiseth scheduled a series of town-hall meetings to gather public input; a pair were held June 8 and 9 last week, and two more are scheduled at 6 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday in the cafeterias at Dennis Earl Elementary School and Turlock Junior High School, respectively.

“During the last couple of months, folks have brought up different questions about what disclosure laws we have in place,” the mayor said Friday. He scheduled the workshops, he said, “to gain community input on whether we need to have additional rules.”

City Attorney Phaedra Norton told Thursday’s gathering that Modesto’s Tin Cup ordinance could be “vulnerable to constitutional challenge.”

Critics have questioned whether an applicant seeking a council blessing could donate a bunch of money to leaders seen as unfriendly to a project, forcing them to abstain from voting.

Although the workshops have drawn few participants, “those who do attend find out we already have a lot of strict guidelines to adhere to, and they come away well-informed,” Soiseth said.

Bates, who unsuccessfully encouraged Soiseth to recuse himself during the farmers market acrimony, sees the series of workshops as a facade orchestrated to help the council find ways around transparency.

“I’m not comfortable with foxes guarding henhouses,” said Bates, who left the council in 1990. “We have a City Council with no interest in disclosure and true transparency deciding the parameters of an ordinance.”

Soiseth said the issue could be decided at the council’s June 28 meeting, which starts at 6 p.m. in the council chamber, 156 S. Broadway.

This story was originally published June 11, 2016 at 6:54 PM with the headline "Turlock initiative plan for campaign money rules stalls."