PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia’s Board of Ethics took the rare step of going to court two weeks ago to stop the political action committee (PAC) For a Better Philadelphia from spending money on behalf of mayoral candidate Jeff Brown. A Common Pleas judge issued a temporary injunction and scheduled a hearing Monday on whether to make it permanent.
At the 11th hour, the PAC agreed to stop spending on Brown through the May 16 primary, but the larger case — that Brown violated campaign finance law by fundraising for what was supposed to be an independent group — remains before the court.
The Board has been in charge of enforcing the city’s campaign finance laws since 2006. It has settled dozens of cases with the agreement of the candidates involved. Only once before has it had to take a case to court, in Board of Ethics v. McCaffrey for District Attorney in 2009, which subsequently settled with McCaffrey admitting he’d violated the law and paying a $750 fine.
“It has done a remarkable job at enforcing a fairly complex set of rules,” said Pat Christmas, chief policy officer for the election watchdog Committee of Seventy. “Despite having a very small staff, the Board enforces these rules in a way that’s made today’s election and public integrity landscape almost unrecognizable from what it was two decades ago.”
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What makes the case so unusual is not only that the PAC is resisting the Board of Ethics in court, but also that candidate Brown is attacking the Board’s integrity.
Brown told the Philadelphia Inquirer the case is “a political hit job” and suggested the Board was investigating the PAC at the behest of “the political establishment.”
Politicians who’ve been fined by the Board are not particularly fond of it but none of them have questioned the Board’s motives as anything other than doing its job.
Christmas called Brown’s comments “concerning” and “disturbing.”
“It’s the first instance in a local race of what we see regularly in national politics — attack an institution we’ve relied on to protect our election integrity,” Christmas said.
Democratic City Committee chair Bob Brady was amused by Brown’s accusation.
“They’re certainly not politicians. If they were politicians they wouldn’t have fined me,” he said with a chuckle.
Brady is one of the dozens of politicians — mostly Democrats — the Board has fined since voters put it in charge of enforcing strict campaign finance laws adopted by City Council in 2004, after an FBI probe of corruption in the administration of Mayor John Street.
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“Philadelphia has among the strictest public integrity laws in the country,” Christmas says, noting that that’s somewhat at odds with the city’s historic reputation for public corruption (Lincoln Steffens famous “corrupt and contented” quotation dates back to 120 years ago). “There’s actually not that many cities that have ethics officials of the caliber we have here in Philadelphia.”
The laws impose limits on contributions to candidates from individuals and PACs and establish a firewall between candidates and groups that can independently spend unlimited amounts on their behalf. They are barred from coordinating with each other.
The intention is to limit opportunities for a quid pro quo between elected officials and their donors. The city’s stringent disclosure requirements make those potential relationships transparent.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC — allowing unlimited independent expenditures by third parties to influence elections — the laws have been somewhat undermined. PACs can get around contribution limits and reporting requirements. For a Better Philadelphia, for example, is the name of both a PAC and a non-profit. Donors to the non-profit can remain anonymous. According to the Board of Ethics injunction request, the non-profit was the main source of funds for the PAC, thus most of the PACs donors are not known. That’s what’s referred to as “dark money.”
In its court filing, the Board alleges that Brown participated in several For a Better Philadelphia fundraisers, suggested who to invite and interacted with potential donors to the group.
Brown admitted that he raised money for the group, in an interview with KYW Newsradio, but added that he had not yet declared his candidacy at the time and that he acted in accordance with the advice of legal counsel.
Board of Ethics regulations state that expenditures are coordinated if a candidate “solicits or directs funds to the person making the expenditure …within 12 months before the election the expenditure seeks to influence.” The primary is May 16. The fundraisers were last summer and fall.
The Board is seeking fines for the alleged violations but sought the injunction because it said the PAC was continuing to spend money on Brown’s behalf, putting other candidates at a disadvantage.