Fresno supervisors sneak around newly expanded campaign finance law with CEMEX vote | Opinion
Steve Brandau and Sal Quintero want your vote for another term on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors.
What Brandau and Quintero don’t want, evidently, is to properly notify voters that they took $2,500 apiece in political campaign contributions from a business whose local operations hinge on their decisions from the dais.
That they chose to remain silent may not constitute a violation of California’s newly expanded pay-to-play law. Even so, it still makes Brandau and Quintero look sneaky.
Had the Board of Supervisors not denied the city of Fresno’s appeal of CEMEX’s permit extension during its Tuesday meeting, more than 100 years of gravel mining along the San Joaquin River would’ve halted before month’s end.
Instead, by a unanimous 5-0 vote, the county supes granted CEMEX a three-year window to continue operations so that the multinational corporation, its consultants and county planners have enough time assemble the environmental report necessary to justify blasting a 600-foot-deep pit near the river so the extraction of materials can continue for another century.
Considering how indebted Board members are to the county’s continued sprawl, the decision registered zero on the surprise meter. The next move is up to the Fresno City Council, which hopefully will have the gumption to take the county to court over a mining operation nearly two decades past its contractual 2005 “horizon date.”
SB 1439, which took effect Jan. 1, essentially states that local government officials can’t vote on matters that have a direct financial impact on certain business interests that contributed more than $250 to their campaign in the previous year. The law also prevents local officials from accepting contributions that exceed that amount for 12 months after any vote.
“The new law will apply to votes on real estate developments, trash hauling contracts and other matters where there is a direct link between an official’s vote and the financial interests of the donor,” wrote its author, state Sen. Steve Glazer.
“Other matters,” such as a gravel-mining operation whose permits were set to expire July 28, forcing a relocation unless the board stepped in.
As it happens, all five members of the Fresno County Board of Supervisors have, since 2019, received campaign contributions from CEMEX or its employees. But only two, a $2,500 donation to Brandau from the CEMEX local ops manager Pete LoCastro on Oct. 5, 2022, and a $2,500 donation to Quintero from CEMEX on Nov. 30, occurred within the last 12 months.
Did campaign violations occur?
Did Brandau and Quintero run afoul of SB 1439 when they did not recuse themselves from voting Tuesday? Or adhere to another provision that requires them to “disclose on the record” any donations in excess of $250 prior to the proceeding?
Evidently not.
According to Jay Wierenga, spokesman for the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state agency responsible for enforcing campaign laws, SB 1439 “was not intended to and does not” contain a “look back” period. Meaning any donations taken before Jan. 1 do not count toward the California Government Code statute that was revised.
Meaning Brandau and Quintero get to skate on this one — at least with respect to committing a campaign violation.
However, they shouldn’t be let completely off the hook. Neither incumbent is ignorant of SB 1439. They could have chosen to follow the law as written and at least disclosed the CEMEX donations before casting their votes.
Rather, both chose to remain silent. They continued the long-standing tradition in local government of keeping potential conflicts of interest hush-hush.
Exactly the sort of thing the new law was designed to root out.
As Brandau and Quintero seek re-election, perhaps they could try a little harder to be transparent with the voting public about the sources of their campaign financial support.
Or perhaps they don’t think voters deserve to know that they took $2,500 apiece during this election cycle from a multinational corporation bent on plundering Fresno’s greatest natural resources for another 100 years.
Whoops. Guess that’s out of the bag now.
This story was originally published July 20, 2023 at 1:45 PM.
