SLO County supervisors need to pass campaign finance reform ASAP. Here’s why | Opinion

The clock is ticking on the new majority of the SLO County Board of Supervisors to unwind the legal tangle the previous far-right majority left with their radical gerrymander of supervisor districts.

As well, time is short to reform a county campaign finance law that allows up to $25,000 in total donations from a single source — five times the state’s limit — another dark legacy of the former board majority.

The new majority began moving on both issues last week. While they signaled possibly abandoning the county’s legal defense of the gerrymander, a final resolution could eat precious time, as will deciding the resultant supervisor district boundaries.

They should light a fire under county staff to expedite these initiatives. California’s next primary election is March 5, 2024 — a mere 13 months hence.

The calendar is unforgiving for candidates running for a board seat in 2024. I’m told the county clerk must know the boundaries by August in order to prepare election materials and logistics to accommodate the early primary.

Some contenders already are revving up for the D1, D3 and D5 seats. Problem is, few candidates outside D1 (which won’t change much, gerrymander notwithstanding) know who’s running where because district boundaries remain unclear.

A decision delayed until August would leave potential candidates only seven months to finance and organize campaigns — an instant in campaign time.

Fixing the gerrymander and campaign finance reform are key to mending the board’s elections process, deliberately broken by the former majority solely to benefit themselves and the local GOP.

While the issues are intertwined, campaign finance reform has my attention. I’ve been Supervisor Bruce Gibson’s chief campaign strategist since his first run for office in 2006, and for the late D2 Supervisor Shirley Bianchi’s campaigns in 1998 and 2002.

We rarely raised more than $100,000 for those races. Then came 2022, when Gibson’s campaign brought in some $580,000 to compete against a well-funded opponent plus two dark-money political action committees.

It took this ungodly sum — and a tireless crew of volunteers on the ground — to produce Gibson’s 13-vote victory in a D2 contest that, prior to the gerrymandering, he’d won four times with margins of nearly 20 percent.

With repeal of local campaign finance rules, individual contributions would be capped at the state limit of $4,900. Another significant plus: Legal enforcement of these limits would revert to the state, removed from the hands of Dan Dow, our hyper-partisan district attorney.

The dark side of reform: While the lower limit may slow the financial arms races typical of recent local supervisor contests, it undoubtedly will spawn proliferation of dark-money PACs, cynically manufactured specifically to get around individual contribution limits.

Traditionally, PACs that have slithered into SLO County’s elections have smeared Democratic candidates and causes with attack ads and mailers. Over the past 40-plus years, I don’t recall any PAC that has had anything good to say about any candidate or cause not backed by the local GOP.

To counter the anticipated undue influence of PACs, the new board majority might consider addressing some of the mystery surrounding them: Who are these people? Where does their money come from? Who controls their spending? Why mustn’t they disclose simple details about their operations the way candidate campaigns are?

Sure, state law governs campaign finance disclosure, but our Board of Supervisors should press for real transparency. There should be not only donation limits, but also mandatory disclosure of funding sources behind PACs.

And not just require the name of some vague entity in Orange County, as with the PAC that spent $50,000 sliming Gibson last cycle. At least Dow’s name was affixed to the $25,000 smear he funded against Gibson.

The new majority should require PACs to disclose specific names and contact information of the money behind them, just like candidates are required to do.

By promoting campaign contribution limits that include PAC disclosure requirements, the new board majority would be forcing opponents of campaign finance transparency to publicly argue why dark-money PACs should not be subject to sunshine like every other candidate in SLO County.

Ticktock, new board majority; there’s a lot to be done and not a lot of time to do it before the next election.

Tom Fulks is an elected member of the SLO County Democratic Central Committee.