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The Mountain View City Council approved a slate of new campaign-finance rules meant to clamp down on shadowy groups seeking to influence elections. As part of the new changes, the city will establish an electronic-filing system for campaign documents, a move hailed as good step toward improving political transparency.
The reforms come at a significant time, just months before the November election in which four City Council seats will be at stake. For Mountain View’s council members — two of whom are currently involved in re-election campaigns — the decision to tighten disclosure rules had real personal stakes.
The new rules would mandate that any campaign mailers or newspaper advertisements should disclose the top five donors giving more than $2,500, or in the case of small-size ads, the top three donors. This would apply to any committees that make expenditures in a city election, including independent groups not based in Mountain View.
The guidelines are meant to allow voters to get a better idea of who exactly is funneling money to promote a particular candidate or policy. The call for donor transparency was spurred by allegations of impropriety during the 2014 council election. It was revealed after that election that a coalition of landlords had funneled about $90,000 through a shell group to support three candidates. Two of those candidates, Ken Rosenberg and Pat Showalter, emerged as victors that year. Both council members disavowed any connection to the group, which went by the name Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition and was run out of a Long Beach attorney’s office.
It is questionable just how effective the landlords’ spending was in the long run, and some believe that it ended up backfiring. But for those heavily involved in Mountain View civic life, the outside spending could be a bad omen for future elections, with more “dark money,” and dirtier political tactics like negative advertisements or disinformation campaigns.
Councilman Lenny Siegel, who was elected in 2014, said he felt like the Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition in a sneaky way was trying to prevent him from winning a seat on the council.
“Their mailers didn’t have anything to do with their intent; the things they put out had nothing to do with their actual goals,” he said. “This would affect the collegiality of (Mountain View) campaigns once the election is over.”
The challenge for local policymakers is to anticipate future tricks that political committees might use to circumvent the city’s rules. In particular, council members were concerned that political groups might employ limited-liability corporations or other business entities to hide their true financiers. For that reason, city staff also included provisions to force committees to identify third-party groups that donated earmarked funds.
Any future violations of this measure could be prosecuted by the city attorney with injunctions or a civil lawsuit for up a $10,000 penalty. Members of the public could also file complaints seeking penalties, and they could be entitled to receive half of any fines levied. Any fines paid to the city will be added to the general fund.
The new campaign-finance rules received near-unanimous support, including enthusiastic praise from new candidates joining the council race. Lucas Ramirez, a member of the city’s Human Relations Commission who advocated for the city’s ordinance, urged the council to consider making it even stricter. He recommended lowering the threshold from $2,500 to $100, and to have the exact amount given by top donors disclosed on campaign materials.
“If you adopt the ordinance as it is, it would be among the strongest in the state,” Ramirez said. “We’re trying to give voters more complete information so they can evlaute the mailers they receive.”
The council declined to follow these suggestions, but they did endorse the creation of an electronic-filing system for future campaign reports. This system should make it much easier for candidates and political committees to submit mandatory reports by giving them a simple automated form to fill out online. City officials selected a Riverside firm, SouthTech, to help establish an electronic-filing system at an annual cost of $5,664.
The electronic-filing system should be ready to go by late July, said City Clerk Lorrie Brewer, but the city decline to make it mandatory for the November election since many candidates aren’t familiar with it yet. By next January, candidates will be required to use it.
Email Mark Noack at mnoack@mv-voice.com
Well we know who the Voice supported in 2014 and we know who it will support in 2016 – just look at who it quotes, the context, and what is said.
We need equal opportunity from the Voice but some how this is always dropped and never reported on by the Voice…sad.
Funding transparency for/from all candidates can only help keep fundings of campaigns more legit and in tune with voters’ concerns.
I find it cynical of the MVCC candidates who financially benefited from the Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition in 2014 to claim “I know nothing!” and thereby assume the stance of being independent from the donors’ agenda. That’s simply a bridge too far re credulity.
And Sierra those benefited candidates’ actions in accepting the money speak louder than any quote could in this article. Try to keep up.
THANK YOU, “NoTrustInTheVoice” – you stated very clearly why the Mountain View Voice has become such a laughing stock. They hide their associations and have been extremely dishonest with the citizens of Mountain View – especially over the “Mountain View Tenants Coalition” fiasco. Where is their full disclosure?
The quite obvious one-sided reporting is unprofessional, shameful and embarrassing, but the Voice only cares to promote their own agenda – not give fair reporting covering both sides of this issue. As you stated, the Editorial Board of the Voice does not even live in our City – and they have no “dog in this fight” so to speak. One of their past employees is pushing the rent control issue, and that’s all they care about. THEY won’t have to deal with the disintegration of housing from lack of maintenance, nor the blight and drop in property values that undoubtedly comes from rent control.
So instead of a paper, we have a cheap propaganda sheet. The Voice is fooling nobody, and it’s a sad commentary on how far the Voice has fallen. I recopy some of your most important points below, and once again I thank you for exposing the hypocrisy of the Voice’s poor reporting:
The Voice has not done one story on who the group called the”Mountain View Tenants Coalition” is.
They have not mentioned that there are staff and or former staff from the Voice paper working for this group. The Silicon Valley Business Journal has mentioned this.
They have not done any reporting as to how many people from the Mountain View Day Worker Center make up this MVTC group.
They also have not stated any disclosures on any of these stories regarding if any of the reporters are involved in any conflict of interest.
They have not run any stories on where this group is getting the money needed to pay the signature gathers the $4 per signature.
@a MVresident,
You are making the precise point of what NoTrustInTheVoice is stating.
You are only attacking a group solely on the fact that a legal and lawful group of people with a business is out there representing themself’s.
As the majority of the small Mom and Pop business people that provide a housing service to our community, they do not have the means to individually run any kind of out reach to the people to express what they need as a business, or who they support. That is why you have every type of business that exists, it has it’s own trade group represent them.
There is nothing wrong or illegall about that, except when the money comes from “apartment owners” or groups that spend money against the city’s candidates that the Voice chooses.
That is why the Voice writes these articles attacking theses groups and demands more transparency in elections, so they can instantly discredit them for no other reason than to say where the money came from.
I also demand that the Voice do as has been suggested and be transparent as well.
As it turned out, the NEC was a group that represented many interest. We now know that money that came into the NEC from the likes of PG&E had nothing to do with the city elections at the time, meaning,companies like PG&E had no issue’s before the city but the group gives funds to candidates that support property rights.
Again, this would not be an issue if our activist in our city would have had their candidates supported by the NEC.
With regards to the Mountain View Tenants Coalition, it does not wash that you say they are just renters. If that was the case it should be no reason to not disclose all of the names involved with this group.
You people throw a temper tantrum as soon as you hear the words apartment association. If you hate them so much, do not live there. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.
It has been reported that a tenant advocacy group out of San Francisco is involved, god help us.
The Day Worker Center is heavily involved and is probably the main player in setting this front group up.
We know the name of a former Voice employee is working on this issue, who else is involved from the Voice.
The group needs to disclose all people involved and what city’s do they live in, and who is funding this.
Wow! What a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories. Rent control is not some wild scheme dreamed up by the Voice. It’s a fairly predictable response to an affordable housing crisis here. My God, there are people living in cars and recreational vehicles all over town, including often on my street. If we don’t do something actually effective to address this crisis they’ll become as common as favelas in Brazil.
Rent control organizing has started up all over the Bay Area – Redwood City, Burlingame, San Mateo, SJ, Richmond, the city of Alameda and probably more but I’m not really on top of it. The Voice is not organizing all these campaigns. People who live in these cities are. They’re usually funded by churches, who often fund initiatives aimed at benefitting the less fortunate. The MVTC meetings are all open and times are posted. Go see yourself. It’s just a bunch of Mountain View residents there.
@ MV Homeowner,
If that is what is important to you, then pay for. You are totally ignoring the property owners who own the apartments, which many of them have gone out of business, filed for bankruptcy and lost millions of dollars in the last recession. If you do not understand the other side of this issue, then get informed.
Do you see people living in cars and RV’s in Atherton?
How about Los Altos?
Think about why. Those places cost more than Mountain View. If the high price of housing is the cause.. how comes those cities are filled with people living in their cars and RV’s?
Maher, candidates don’t “accept” contributions from Independent Expenditure efforts. Independent Expenditures are completely outside the control of candidates and they can’t help it if some outside group targets them–either in support or opposition. Let’s just hope that this year’s election stays positive.
I CALL ON THE MOUNTAIN VIEW VOICE TO ENACT IT’S OWN TRANSPARENCY RULES FOR THE BENEFIT OF MOUNTAIN VIEW RESIDENTS, FOR ALL ISSUES POLITICAL.
There is no bigger “Shadowy Group” than the Mountain View Voice paper.
It is their intention to install a “Publishers Council or Publishers Candidates.
The city council has passed a set of new disclosure rules for elections, and candidates. The Voice should adopt similar rules themselves if they continue to be actively involved in writing editorials telling the council how they should vote, what new ordinances are needed, and telling voters how they should vote.
The Voice is the single most powerful, influential media print in our city. Their candidates that they endorse are mostly approved by voters who have no information about the people at the Voice. As residents in our city, we need to have information as to who the people are in the Voice so we can make an informed decision.
Their free, one sided stories, that they give to their candidates and or agenda, is no different than outside groups spending their own money on mailers, yet council did not address this. This is not free speech but politico speech with the intent to have power in government.
1- The editor, Andrea Gemmet and Associate Editor Renee Batti, need to state what city and state they live in.
They also need to state what committees-boards-organization that they are on, or advise to, past and present. They should similarly comply with the new requirements that the city passed and list their donors.
In all articles that they write in the Voice, at the bottom of it should be clearly stated any conflict of interest in that story, for current and past persons involved with the paper.
2- All reporters should state what city they live in. State what committees-boards-organization that they are on, or advise to, past and present.
All articles they write should state any conflict of interest.
3-Ballot measures and candidates that the Voice supports and asks residents to vote for, opposing point of view on those measures and candidates should have their view and closing statement stated as well, on the same page at the same time.
4-Any Voice employee who logs onto the Voice website and makes any comments in any of the threads, that they shall only use their real name for the screen name.
The residents of our community needs full transparency from everyone involved that affects our community. The Voice has been the least transparent to date, and it is time for that to be corrected.
Why should we give any credibility to the Voice, for issues that they say we need to vote on, if the editorial board does not live in our city?
The Voice has already shown how dishonest they are with the current issue of rent control. They have never done a story on the other side, which is the business side of the rental business.
The Voice has not done one story on who the group called the”Mountain View Tenants Coalition” is.
They have not mentioned that there are staff and or former staff from the Voice paper working for this group. The Silicon Valley Business Journal has mentioned this.
They have not done any reporting as to how many people from the Mountain View Day Worker Center make up this MVTC group.
They also have not stated any disclosures on any of these stories regarding if any of the reporters are involved in any conflict of interest.
They have not run any stories on where this group is getting the money needed to pay the signature gathers the $4 per signature.
The Voice, and their activist candidates only want to know if any money comes in from any type of real estate group so that they could automatically call them names and discredit them.
The community needs to know all of the truth.
There is no true comparison between the “Mountain View Tenants Coalition” to the “Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition.”
The Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition was a landlord group (California Apartment Association) based outside of the city that dumped money and mysterious mailers into our local democracy to trick the voters:
http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2015/02/06/landlords-hid-big-election-spending
The Mountain View Tenants Coalition is largely a group of your neighbors, poor Mountain View working residents and MV church members.
You don’t have to support the ballot initiative, that’s your right. But drop by any MV Catholic Church on the weekend and see the volunteers gathering to do what “they believe” will help the city. That is democracy at its finest, neighbors doing what they believe will help the city. It’s also a beautiful part of our democracy for any resident to reject their neighbors ideas if they don’t like it.
As for the “Neighborhood” Empowerment Coalition, that was a monstrosity of our democratic system, some outside force whose very name itself was a form of deception. There is no true comparison.
How can anyone defend the “Neighborhood Empowerment Coalition” ads by the California Apartment Association as the normal activity of “a legal and lawful group of people with a business out there representing themself?”
The language in the NEC ads and the title of the group in the NEC ads all made it sound like local residents, not some state wide special interest group, whose real identity wouldn’t even be disclosed until after the election.
The NEC ads were clearly made to mislead. Misleading voters should never be part of a democracy, at the very least, I’m proud to rebuke them, and proud our city is trying to at least keep it away from MV!
“Mountain View Tenants Coalition” is just that, a group of tenants. Like them or not, that’s fine, but we know who they are.
Do MV residents really think they are the same, or are some messages on this board being posted by outsiders? The NEC is politics at its worst.