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The Death of a Government Ethics Activist and a March on a City Ethics Commission
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Robert Wechsler
I've been remiss at covering the complex battles that have gone on in
and around the San Francisco ethics commission. I did, however, start a piece in
August 2009, which I have appended to this one, with an update.
According to an article in the Fog City Journal, a week from this Saturday, there will be a memorial service, and march to or upon the San Francisco ethics commission, in memory of Joe Lynn, a former EC campaign finance officer and EC member who died in December.
According to the piece, Lynn "took his charge as a public servant seriously and fought consciously against the stereotype of the unhelpful, disinterested bureaucrat. Indeed, the vigor with which he served the public brought him into conflict with his superiors, who in their roles managing the government agency charged with fostering public trust all too often found themselves persuaded by private interests to drop complaints, rewrite rules, and hide 'smoking guns' in window-office desk drawers. When, for example, Joe discovered an illegal, $800 thousand campaign contribution made by PG&E, his superiors ordered him to suppress the discovery. Unswayed by the potential for reprisal, Joe released the information and initiated a process that would result in the largest fine ever levied by the Ethics Commission."
Regular readers of this blog will recognize that largest fine as being brought against the law firms of the man who is calling for the closing down of all city ethics commissions in California (others can read about it in a recent blog post).
Government ethics cannot do without people like Joe Lynn. According to the article, he was honored for his work by the Society of Professional Journalists, then-president of the Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzalez, then-Supervisor Gavin Newsom, and others. Sadly, few EC members and staff members are ever recognized for their work. You've got to catch that big one.
When things got too tough for Lynn as a staff member, the district attorney appointed him to the EC itself. According to the article, he "helped to usher in mayoral public financing, expand supervisorial public financing, and strengthen the Campaign Finance Reform Act."
A former lawyer, disbarred due to a drug addiction that followed the loss of his lover and many, many friends to AIDS, Lynn's comeback was devoted to public service. According to a blog post in the San Francisco Weekly, to honor Lynn, after his memorial services, his friends "will march to the Ethics Commission nearby on Van Ness. Organizers half-seriously mentioned carrying 'pitchforks' and 'torches.'"
This will most likely be the first march on a local government EC in the history of America. An historic moment. Read below to find out why they're marching.
From August 9, 2009 and February 11, 2010: What does a city ethics commission do about a whistleblower in its own midst? This is the situation for the San Francisco ethics commission, according to an article in last week's S. F. Weekly (also see a recent article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian). The EC's fine collection officer, Oliver Luby, has filed three whistleblower complaints against the EC. The first, in 2004, disclosed the destruction of documents. In 2008, he disclosed the fact that a database switchover would destroy a large number of documents. And in May 2009, he said that the EC was overcharging an official for fees he had already paid.
According to the article, about a week after filing the most recent whistleblower complaint, Luby "received an official reprimand for using his office computer and e-mail to write to the state's Fair Political Practices Commission to offer his personal input on California campaign finance laws. This exact charge was then mirrored in a subsequent anonymous complaint, as was the threat of termination later echoed by [deputy director] Ng."
In addition to the whistleblower complaints, last year Luby wrote an op-ed piece for the San Francisco Chronicle about his attempts to get the EC to deal with an apparent money-laundering scheme involving campaign contributions, which the EC has jurisdiction over. It appears that Luby went through the right procedures before going public: He wrote a letter to the EC's executive director in late 2005, he wrote a memo identifying delinquent major donors, and the next year asked for authorization to contact these donors. Then, when he was told this was not an EC priority, he wrote a memo to the commission itself about "the decision to end enforcement of major donor delinquencies and how such a delinquency had played the critical role in uncovering the community college money laundering."
A February 2, 2010 S.F. Weekly blog post reported that the Mormon Church finally disclosed that it had contributed nearly $190,000 to pass Proposition 8, against same-sex marriage. Oliver Luby is quoted as saying that if a big-time donor opted to skip out on its local ethics commission filings "there would be no repercussions. ... [Major donors] are making late filings and there are no repercussions, and some people are not filing at all -- and we can tell. And we are not making any attempt [to pressure them into filing]."
"Luby said that it's often as easy as cross-checking a donor's reported contributions with the donations reported by recipient committees to catch people or organizations failing to make major disclosures. And yet, he alleges, there is no follow-through from his office; while small-time donors giving 100 bucks may be run through the ringer, those giving far, far more are treated with kid gloves."
That's something to march about.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
According to an article in the Fog City Journal, a week from this Saturday, there will be a memorial service, and march to or upon the San Francisco ethics commission, in memory of Joe Lynn, a former EC campaign finance officer and EC member who died in December.
According to the piece, Lynn "took his charge as a public servant seriously and fought consciously against the stereotype of the unhelpful, disinterested bureaucrat. Indeed, the vigor with which he served the public brought him into conflict with his superiors, who in their roles managing the government agency charged with fostering public trust all too often found themselves persuaded by private interests to drop complaints, rewrite rules, and hide 'smoking guns' in window-office desk drawers. When, for example, Joe discovered an illegal, $800 thousand campaign contribution made by PG&E, his superiors ordered him to suppress the discovery. Unswayed by the potential for reprisal, Joe released the information and initiated a process that would result in the largest fine ever levied by the Ethics Commission."
Regular readers of this blog will recognize that largest fine as being brought against the law firms of the man who is calling for the closing down of all city ethics commissions in California (others can read about it in a recent blog post).
Government ethics cannot do without people like Joe Lynn. According to the article, he was honored for his work by the Society of Professional Journalists, then-president of the Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzalez, then-Supervisor Gavin Newsom, and others. Sadly, few EC members and staff members are ever recognized for their work. You've got to catch that big one.
When things got too tough for Lynn as a staff member, the district attorney appointed him to the EC itself. According to the article, he "helped to usher in mayoral public financing, expand supervisorial public financing, and strengthen the Campaign Finance Reform Act."
A former lawyer, disbarred due to a drug addiction that followed the loss of his lover and many, many friends to AIDS, Lynn's comeback was devoted to public service. According to a blog post in the San Francisco Weekly, to honor Lynn, after his memorial services, his friends "will march to the Ethics Commission nearby on Van Ness. Organizers half-seriously mentioned carrying 'pitchforks' and 'torches.'"
This will most likely be the first march on a local government EC in the history of America. An historic moment. Read below to find out why they're marching.
From August 9, 2009 and February 11, 2010: What does a city ethics commission do about a whistleblower in its own midst? This is the situation for the San Francisco ethics commission, according to an article in last week's S. F. Weekly (also see a recent article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian). The EC's fine collection officer, Oliver Luby, has filed three whistleblower complaints against the EC. The first, in 2004, disclosed the destruction of documents. In 2008, he disclosed the fact that a database switchover would destroy a large number of documents. And in May 2009, he said that the EC was overcharging an official for fees he had already paid.
According to the article, about a week after filing the most recent whistleblower complaint, Luby "received an official reprimand for using his office computer and e-mail to write to the state's Fair Political Practices Commission to offer his personal input on California campaign finance laws. This exact charge was then mirrored in a subsequent anonymous complaint, as was the threat of termination later echoed by [deputy director] Ng."
In addition to the whistleblower complaints, last year Luby wrote an op-ed piece for the San Francisco Chronicle about his attempts to get the EC to deal with an apparent money-laundering scheme involving campaign contributions, which the EC has jurisdiction over. It appears that Luby went through the right procedures before going public: He wrote a letter to the EC's executive director in late 2005, he wrote a memo identifying delinquent major donors, and the next year asked for authorization to contact these donors. Then, when he was told this was not an EC priority, he wrote a memo to the commission itself about "the decision to end enforcement of major donor delinquencies and how such a delinquency had played the critical role in uncovering the community college money laundering."
A February 2, 2010 S.F. Weekly blog post reported that the Mormon Church finally disclosed that it had contributed nearly $190,000 to pass Proposition 8, against same-sex marriage. Oliver Luby is quoted as saying that if a big-time donor opted to skip out on its local ethics commission filings "there would be no repercussions. ... [Major donors] are making late filings and there are no repercussions, and some people are not filing at all -- and we can tell. And we are not making any attempt [to pressure them into filing]."
"Luby said that it's often as easy as cross-checking a donor's reported contributions with the donations reported by recipient committees to catch people or organizations failing to make major disclosures. And yet, he alleges, there is no follow-through from his office; while small-time donors giving 100 bucks may be run through the ringer, those giving far, far more are treated with kid gloves."
That's something to march about.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
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