Skirting the law on a technicality doesn’t match the Kristin Olsen we know
Nearly 15 years ago, an energetic, 31-year-old candidate for Modesto City Council walked into The Modesto Bee, handed me some documents and asked to explain a mistake that, if made public, could make her look bad, perhaps costing her votes in the upcoming election.
She didn’t ask me — a Bee reporter at the time, covering that 2005 election — not to write or pursue the story. She just wanted me to have all the facts so we could make an informed decision on whether her error was newsworthy.
That’s transparency at its finest.
Consulting with editors, we decided it was information that voters ought to know. I wrote the story, explaining that the candidate, who was serving as a Modesto planning commissioner at the time, had accepted $2,250 in campaign contributions a few days after casting a vote for a project proposed by her political donor.
Using municipal power to enrich someone who turns around and gives you money is illegal. It’s the essence of quid pro quo, a term we became familiar with last year in the presidential impeachment.
Upon realizing the error, the candidate had returned the money. She then gathered relevant documentation and paid me that visit, essentially coming clean even before I or anyone else knew anything was wrong. “I want to be perceived as completely aboveboard,” she told me at the time.
Why tell this story now?
Because that candidate was Kristin Olsen, now chairwoman of the Board of Supervisors of Stanislaus County. The same Kristin Olsen who months ago quietly moved out of the county district she represents, in apparent violation of state law.
I say “quietly” because she didn’t announce it. I say “apparent” because she insists she’s doing nothing illegal, although accepting that conclusion requires some mental contortionism.
Olsen had been renting a home in Riverbank in the district she represents. She bought a home in Modesto in a district she does not. Nothing wrong with that, as long as she continued living in Riverbank, which she did for a few months while the Modesto house was being renovated.
She intended to stay in Riverbank through the end of the year, when her term in office ends, she said. But her landlord, knowing Olsen had purchased another house, asked if she might speed up her moving plans because he had another prospective tenant for the Riverbank rental who needed it worse than she did. She agreed, and quietly moved herself and her children to the Modesto home in May or June, she said.
The law says it’s not OK to live outside a district you represent (it’s different in Congress, which has no such residency rules, and in the California Legislature, whose rules are not as strict). But Olsen’s attorney found a technicality to solve the problem: if she intends to return to Riverbank, that’s all that matters.
And she intends to return to Riverbank, insists Olsen, who continues to pull down a $106,350 salary for her part-time job leading the county board.
Does this add up?
A cynic might say: “Why would anyone leave a big, beautiful home you own to return to a rental you don’t?”
I asked exactly that, when we sat down on Thursday.
“Because,” Olsen said, “it’s the right thing to do.”
I asked, isn’t that the same as admitting that moving out of your district — while continuing to represent it — was the wrong thing to do?
Not at all, she said, “because I do intend to move back, when the house becomes available. This was a legally acceptable option.”
I keep going back to Olsen’s 2005 transparency, when her explanation felt so different from this one.
She won that election handily, ousting incumbent Denny Jackman by nearly 19 percentage points. Olsen went on to represent us for six years in the California Assembly, climbing to the top as Assembly minority leader before returning and winning her county supervisor’s seat.
Coming clean immediately in 2005 was solid strategy. Voters are notoriously forgiving of popular figures, especially when they’re humble and repentant, and even sometimes when they’re not.
Why didn’t she employ a similar strategy in 2020? Did she think no one would notice she had moved?
“At the time, we were dealing with such heavy, heavy issues,” Olsen said, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and George Floyd protests.
Well, is she actively looking for some other rental in Riverbank, Oakdale or Waterford, in her district?
No. She’ll only return if the rental she lived in before somehow opens up, she said.
I’ve watched and covered Olsen these 15 years. She is accessible. She shows up. She returns calls. She doesn’t ask us to kill or bury stories, including this one. She doesn’t run or hide when she knows we have tough questions, unlike some politicians with far less courage and little commitment to transparency.
Stanislaus replacement nearly in place
By the time she moved, voters had already started the process of selecting her successor in the March Primary; Bill Zoslocki and Buck Condit emerged from that vote as the top two candidates, and one will claim Olsen’s seat in the November runoff. That was part of her thinking, Olsen said Thursday.
But moving out of her district with no explanation — until The Bee asked for one, a few days ago — was not transparent.
“Was I supposed to go, `Hey, everyone — I moved!’ That would be weird.”
Why? Why not say something at the end of any board meeting, when supervisors are given time to explain anything on their minds? Or, post a simple message to the many fans of her widely followed Facebook page: “Just to let people know, I’ve moved ...”
Because the cover-up almost always is worse than the deed itself.
With a few words or preemptive keystrokes, Olsen could have transparently laid the groundwork for easy forgiveness. That would keep me from wondering what happened to the bright-eyed candidate in 2005 embarrassed at something which, because her sincerity was genuine, everyone soon forgot.
