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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (36395)	1/27/2004 2:06:15 PM
From: lurqer	Respond to of 89467

<Politics Ca style> Grounds for recall? I've gotta pen, where's the petition? Governor broke campaign law, judge rules Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger broke state law last year when he used a loophole to loan his campaign committee $4 million, a move that prevented voters from knowing before Election Day who would end up paying the governor's campaign bills, a judge ruled late Monday. Schwarzenegger will probably face no fines as a result of the ruling, but he will be blocked from paying himself back with the more than $3.4 million he has raised since his election and will have to convert the loans into a personal contribution to his campaign. The millionaire former movie star contributed an additional $4.85 million in cash to his campaign before the Oct. 7 recall election. Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Loren E. McMaster said Schwarzenegger's use of a loophole to avoid a $100,000 cap that voters imposed in 2000 on candidate loans ``flies in the face of the express purpose of the law.'' He said Schwarzenegger's approach would allow rich candidates to ``evade both the $100,000 loan limitation and the requirement of pre-election disclosure of contributions, while those limitations would apply to candidates of more modest means.'' Schwarzenegger's campaign treasurer, Colleen McAndrews, said in a statement that ``the campaign committee intends to comply with the judge's order.'' Schwarzenegger was sued over the loans five days before the recall vote by Berkeley attorney Lowell Finley on behalf of Sacramento labor leader Bill Camp, who was opposing the recall of then-Gov. Gray Davis. ``The voters adopted a loan limit as part of Proposition 34 to prevent candidates from fronting large amounts of money for the final portion of their campaign and then after the election taking special-interest contributions to repay themselves,'' Finley said. `Illusion' over donors While there's no way to know how much Schwarzenegger's use of the loans influenced the outcome of the election, Finley said, ``it did make a difference in how long he was able to maintain the illusion that he was above special-interest politics.'' Schwarzenegger said days before the election that voters should ``trust me'' and shouldn't be concerned whether they knew who his donors were before or after the election. ``I will not take money from special interests, from any of the unions or Indian gaming,'' he said. He has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from developers, insurers and dozens of other businesses. Loophole cited McAndrews, Schwarzenegger's treasurer, deflected blame to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which in 2002 adopted a regulation allowing candidates to ignore Proposition 34's $100,000 loan limit, if they used bank loans to provide the money for their campaigns and were personally liable for repayment in the event the campaign didn't pay the money back. In a footnote to his ruling, McMaster said that Schwarzenegger ``no doubt acted in good faith when the subject loan was obtained since'' he had the FPPC's regulations ``to rely upon.'' But McMaster -- as he did in a September case involving another section of Proposition 34 and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante -- ruled the FPPC wrongly interpreted the ballot measure and created an ``absurdity'' by opening the loan loophole. Proposition 34 ``prohibits a candidate from personally loaning his or her campaign an amount, the outstanding balance of which exceeds $100,000, regardless of the original source of the monies used by the candidate to fund the personal loan,'' McMaster wrote. ``The provisions are not ambiguous or susceptible of more than one reasonable interpretation.'' In Bustamante's case, McMaster ruled that the FPPC wrongly allowed candidates to collect unlimited campaign contributions from single sources as long as the money went into campaign committees that existed prior to the effective date of Proposition 34's contribution limits. In response to McMaster's ruling, the FPPC earlier this month closed that loophole. Officials with the FPPC were not available for comment on the judge's latest ruling. The commission also has sued Bustamante for up to $9 million in penalties, saying he raised money in a way that violated even the loophole the commission had opened. But in Schwarzenegger's case, there appears to be little likelihood of an FPPC suit against the governor because there have been no allegations that he violated commission rules. In addition to the $4 million in loans to his campaign, Schwarzenegger loaned $500,000 to a second committee advocating the recall of Davis, to which he has also donated $650,000. It was unclear Monday whether McMaster's ruling would apply to that loan. mercurynews.com lurqer