Court rules for Fresno councilmembers in lawsuit with county over campaign money transfers

A Fresno County judge ruled unconstitutional the county’s effort to impose a $30,000 limit on transfers of campaign funds by candidates from committees for another office to their county election committee fund.

Friday’s ruling by Superior Court Judge Jon Skiles was a win for a pair of Fresno City Council members, Garry Bredefeld and Luis Chavez, who are both running for the Fresno County Board of Supervisors. The county sued Bredefeld and Chavez under a 2020 ordinance that put a $30,000 cap on transfers or contributions from a candidate’s campaign account for non-county elective offices into their campaign for county offices — including the county Board of Supervisors.

Bredefeld and Chavez, through their Sacramento attorney Brian Hildreth, asserted that the limit violated the U.S. Constitution and its First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and expression.

In his ruling Friday afternoon following a hearing on the case, Skiles found that the county’s ordinance was indeed unconstitutional “as applied” in its interpretation by the county’s legal counsel. The county’s attorney, in the meantime, said options for an appeal are under consideration.

Chavez and Bredefeld both expressed satisfaction with Skiles’ decision and criticized the county’s Board of Supervisors over its use of public funds to sue them over the ordinance.

“It is a dangerous precedent when government officials use their power and position and taxpayer dollars to weaponize the county’s legal department for blatant political purposes,” Chavez said Friday. “As long expected, the judge has clearly drawn a line to ensure that political candidates of all stripes have their constitutional rights protected.”

Bredefeld, who represents northeast Fresno on the City Council, is challenging incumbent Supervisor Steve Brandau for the District 2 seat on the county board. Chavez is running to unseat incumbent District 3 Supervisor Sal Quintero. Both publicly announced their plans to shift money from their existing City Council campaign war chests to their respective supervisorial campaigns — about $223,000 for Bredefeld, $110,000 for Chavez — in defiance of the county’s $30,000 transfer limit.

Bredefeld for months had decried the ordinance and subsequent lawsuit as a “incumbent protection scheme” because the ordinance did not apply to incumbent Fresno County officeholders.

“The transfer of campaign donations from one campaign account to another campaign account is something that’s done all the time in political campaigns in California; it’s nothing new, it’s completely legal,” Bredefeld told reporters in a press conference Monday in front of the B.F. Sisk Courthouse in downtown Fresno.

Bredefeld said two current county supervisors who are up for re-election in 2026 last year transferred more than $400,000 each from their 2022 campaign committees into their 2026 campaign accounts. “They wanted different rules for themselves as incumbents and to limit those that challenge them,” he said.

Despite Bredefeld and Chavez being named as defendants in the lawsuit, Fresno County Counsel Daniel Cederborg said Monday that “this lawsuit did not target individuals but was an attempt to settle conflicting questions” on the issue of campaign transfers.

The county, he added, “filed this lawsuit to determine if (the ordinance) complied with state law that allowed limits to be placed on transfers from candidates’ accounts outside of county offices.”

In his prepared statement, Cederborg said the ordinance “is still fully in effect” but allowed that “the judge found that the county’s limit could not be applied to the narrow circumstances involving intra-candidate transfers of funds from old campaign accounts.”

The county was represented in court by Cederborg and the Los Angeles law firm of Best Best & Krieger. “While the County respectfully disagrees with the Court’s ruling, the Court gave careful consideration to the law,” Cederborg said. “The county will now consider its options with respect to appeal.”

A spokesperson for the county said the agency is not sharing how much has been spent to pursue the lawsuit until the Board of Supervisors gives further direction on what course of action to take.

Bredefeld said he believes that individual supervisors should be required to use their own funds to reimburse county taxpayers for the expense of the lawsuit.

“This was a blatant weaponization of county government by suing me with the threat that if I did not comply with their unconstitutional limit … I can be convicted of a misdemeanor, fined $1,000 and put in jail for six months,” he said. “If they wanted clarification on their ordinance, they could have simply asked the (state) attorney general or the superior court for an opinion. But instead, they sued me..”

Had the county prevailed in the lawsuit, Bredefeld added, “it would have had a chilling effect on any potential candidates running for the Board of Supervisors because these guys have all the advantages that incumbents have.”

Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz had filed a pretrial amicus brief with the court to express the city’s concerns over the county ordinance. In a prepared statement Friday afternoon, he said, a county win could have forced the city to amend its own campaign finance laws.

As it is, Janz said, the ruling means “a city official with an open campaign account could transfer more (than) $30,000 from the city campaign to a county campaign account” for county offices including supervisor, district attorney, sheriff and others.

Bredefeld’s and Chavez’s pledges to move their leftover City Council campaign funds to their county election accounts triggered the county’s legal action. “There is an urgent need for a speedy trial on the proper interpretation of the Fresno County ordinances to avoid violations of the ordinances” by Bredefeld and Chavez and “to avoid any uncertainty or unfairness in the upcoming 2024 elections,” Cederborg wrote in the county’s March 3 complaint.

The county election will be March 5. If a candidate receives more than half of the votes for a county office on that date, he or she will win outright. Otherwise, if no candidate earns a majority of votes, the two top vote-getters will meet in a November runoff.

In addition to Chavez, another Fresno City Council member, Miguel Arias, has declared his candidacy to challenge Quintero in District 3.

Bredefeld is joined in the District 2 race by Paul Dictos, who currently serves as the county’s elected assessor-recorder and has announced that he will challenge Brandau in District 2. Another candidate, Dion Bourdase, has also taken out papers to run for supervisor in District 2.

The filing period for candidates to collect signatures from voters instead of paying filing fees opened Sept. 14 and continues through Nov. 8. The official period for declarations of candidacy and nominations is Nov. 13 through Dec. 8. If the incumbent officeholder opts not to seek re-election, the nomination period is extended to Dec. 13.