Brown signs bill allowing local governments to contract with FPPC to enforce election laws

SACRAMENTO — In the wake of two years of headlines about election security, the Legislature is nearing the end of another year of actively changing political disclosure requirements.

On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that allows local governments to contract with the Fair Political Practices Commission to enforce elections laws. But political attorneys are focused on two elections-related bills still on Brown’s desk.

AB 2880 allows any “local government agency” with a population of less than 3 million to contract with the FPPC to enforce local campaign finance and government ethics laws. It repeals prior bills that created pilot projects in Sacramento and Stockton; those cities will continue to contract for enforcement under the new rules.

“Typically, smaller jurisdictions don’t have the kind of expertise to administer complex laws like that,” said James C. Harrison, a partner with the political law firm Remcho, Johansen & Purcell LLP in Oakland. “The FPPC has that expertise.”

Brown signed more elections bills on Monday. AB 2218 requires the Secretary of State to create a system to allow voters to track their vote-by-mail ballots and make sure they were counted.

SB 759 eliminates a requirement that a vote-by-mail ballot with a signature that looks different from the person’s registration not be counted, and creates a process for a voter to contest any effort to not count their ballot. This is a response to reports that tens of thousands of ballots in California were not counted in recent elections due to alleged signature mismatches.

Harrison chairs the California Political Attorneys Association’s legislative committee. The fast-growing, nearly 200-member group is made up of attorneys who advise clients on how to avoid running afoul of campaign finance and ethics violations.

The CPAA held its annual retreat last weekend. The event included an hourlong panel on a bill Brown signed just last year, AB 249. The California Disclose Act requires campaigns to list their top three donors above $50,000 on political advertisements and mailers. It was opposed by some conservative groups, though it also received Republican votes on its way to passage.

Harrison said he is monitoring two follow-on bills by AB 249’s author, Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco. Both bills now on Brown’s desk would modify AB 249.

AB 2155 exempts most materials solicited by the recipient from being considered political ads. This means that email and text lists that voters voluntarily subscribe to will no longer be subject to the disclosure rules. It also modifies the formatting and language used to disclose donors.

AB 2188 requires online companies such as Facebook Inc. to display who paid for a particular advertisement on their platform. It also requires these companies to track political ads and make the information publicly available, including how much was paid for it and how many people saw it.

“Facebook would have to not only keep a record but also provide access to the public,” Harrison said.

Both bills advanced with little vocal opposition, often gaining Republican votes.

The social media giant spent less than $50,000 on lobbying in California this year in the first six months of 2018, down from recent years. Alphabet Inc.-owned Google also lobbied on AB 2188, among other bills, spending a total of nearly $200,000 on lobbying from January through June.

Another Mullin elections bill died in the closing days of session. AB 84 would have allowed party leaders in California to create fundraising committees similar to those operated by state parties. These committees would have been able to take up to $36,500 from individual donors, up from the current $4,400 per individual of $8,800 for an organization.

Mullin argued the bill would help counteract the flood of corporate “dark money” and increase exposure. But many of the groups that have been allied with him on previous legislation opposed the bill, leading Mullin to shelve it.

“There’s little doubt that money presents the greatest threat to our representative democracy today,” League of Women Voters of California president Helen Hutchison told the Senate Elections Committee last month. “AB 84 makes this problem even worse.”