Labor Reveals Funding for Padilla After Complaints

More than a week overdue, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor disclosed Tuesday that it has launched an independent campaign and has spent $54,915 to support Alex Padilla for a San Fernando Valley seat on the L.A. City Council.

The filing with the Los Angeles city Ethics Commission came only after other candidates alleged that the big labor group, which represents 332 member unions, was conducting an illegal stealth campaign in the 7th City Council District.

The front-runners in the six-candidate race are Padilla, with the backing of labor and Mayor Richard Riordan, and Corinne Sanchez, supported by several City Council members and women’s groups.

Sanchez and Raul Godinez II, another candidate, separately filed formal complaints with the Ethics Commission.

“The Ethics Commission should definitely investigate this,” Godinez said. “It is hard to believe that the federation didn’t know the law.”

Steve Gray-Barkan, a campaign consultant for Sanchez, said the federation’s actions were a violation of the public trust that could affect the outcome of the election.

“It’s really unfair to the public,” he said. “They [the commission] should definitely look at enforcement action, especially because it happened so late in the campaign and there is not enough time to react.”

Groups ranging from the Democratic National Committee to the Los Angeles Police Protective League have spent more than $500,000 on independent expenditure campaigns since 1989. The practice has concerned the Ethics Commission for years, because independent campaigns have not always abided by the city contribution limits of $500 per person.

Godinez, who has raised $50,000 for his campaign, said the intervention of the federation further skews a race where Padilla and Sanchez already had large fund-raising leads. Each has raised $200,000 for their campaigns.

“When an independent expenditure campaign is used to supplement a $200,000 campaign, whatever semblance of a fair fight there might have been goes out the window,” Godinez said.

Under city rules aimed at letting voters know who is bankrolling campaigns, any independent expenditure more than $1,000 must be reported within 24 hours.

In a statement filed Tuesday, the federation’s political action arm, the Council on Political Education, said it spent $31,280 on March 29 to pay for mailers supporting Padilla. In a separate filing, the federation reported spending $23,635 on Monday for mailers supporting Padilla.

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Fabian Nunez, the federation’s political director, charged that the Ethics Commission was to blame for any delays in filing because it sent out unclear information that appeared to list the wrong deadline for filings.

Nunez said an ethics form sent to candidates appeared to indicate disclosures did not have to be made until after April 8.

“We figure it applied to all disclosures,” Nunez said. “It was some confusion on our part.

“We’ve said, ‘OK, now we’ll catch up and do what we didn’t do,’ ” he added.

Rebecca Avila, executive director of the Ethics Commission, said it appears the federation misunderstood the rules for independent expenditures, which she said were clearly spelled out in a separate pamphlet sent out to campaigns.

“They made a simple mistake,” she said. “It has to do with them not being aware of the notification requirement.”

Avila refused to say what action, if any, might be taken involving the federation, but she said if any campaign is found to have violated the ethics rules, it can face a fine of up to $5,000 per violation.

Nunez said his office was assured by the commission staff that there would be no enforcement action.

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Godinez, a former mayor of San Fernando, said the delay deprived voters of information about who is bankrolling Padilla and may have short-circuited a system that lifts spending limits whenever an independent campaign spends more than $50,000. By exceeding $50,000 in an independent expenditure campaign, the federation Tuesday triggered a lifting of the $330,000 spending cap on all candidates who had accepted city matching funds in the race for the northeast San Fernando Valley seat. That is not expected to mean much because none of the candidates is close to raising $300,000 yet.

The disclosure delay could affect the outcome of the election because many voters probably voted by mail in the last week without knowing about the push by the independent campaign.

“If they [voters] had known that the federation was exploiting a loophole in the campaign funding law, that might have affected people’s vote,” Godinez said.

Nunez said the money spent by the federation and COPE, the political action arm, on the campaign for Padilla came from union dues without regard to the city contribution limit. He said the money was paid to consultant Richie Ross for producing mailers designed in-house by the labor organizations.

For the coalition of unions that make up the federation, the 7th Council District seat has been the priority city election this month.

“There is no other campaign in the city of Los Angeles that we are as involved in as the 7th,” Nunez said, adding 450 union volunteers are walking the district and operating phone banks in downtown Los Angeles and Sylmar in support of Padilla.

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The mailers and phone calls are going to the 13,000 union members in the district.

“On April 13, we’re asking every union family to vote for Alex Padilla for City Council,” one mailer states. The mailer notes Padilla’s opposition to a failed 1998 ballot measure aimed at limiting unions’ use of dues for political purposes: “He was with us on Proposition 226.”