Follow the Money

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This post is from a candidate running for Lake Forest City Council. All candidates have been and are at any time invited to blog on Patch.

(Note: The admonition from “Deep Throat” to the Watergate investigators was “Follow the Money”)

In 2010 Scott Voigts spent $37,763 to get elected to City Council. He came in # 1 with 11,332 votes. Peter Herzog came in # 2 with 11,178 votes, and spent $27,145.83. Kathy McCullough spent $7179.12 and came in # 3. Get the picture?

You can see that getting elected can be costly, and it’s getting costlier. Voigts and Herzog alone spent more money in 2010 than was spent in most previous Lake Forest elections for all candidates combined.

(Did you ever wonder why a person would spend $40,000 to get elected to a job that pays $600 a month? That’s a question for a different blog, but well worth keeping in mind as we proceed)

Where does this money come from? In some cases, people have to pony up their own funds. In other cases, relatives, friends and neighbors chip in. But a great deal of the money comes from individuals and businesses that have financial interests coming before the Council, either in the form of contracts or concessions. There’s nothing illegal about this per se. The politicians have written laws so that what otherwise might be viewed as payoffs or bribes can be disguised as “campaign contributions”.

Think about the recent Wal-Mart scandal in Mexico. Wal-Mart officials gave money to city council members in order to secure permits, zoning approvals, eliminate environmental objections, etc. and wrote these contributions off as business expenses. Once the nature and extent of this was realized, Wal-Mart in 2004 prohibited all employees from “offering anything of value to a government official on behalf of Wal-Mart.”

IOW – Wal-Mart recognized that a campaign contribution, even if it isn’t specifically conditional on a vote, can have a corrupting influence on the people receiving the money, so they forbid giving any money on the company’s behalf to city officials.

In 2010 I examined payments to Lake Forest city council members’ election committees between 2002 and 2008, then traced the source of the money to (a) companies that did business with the city and (b) companies and individuals who sought concessions from the city to improve their financial situation (e.g., developers). On this basis, more than 120 payments were identified, amounting to nearly $90,000 in payments to city council members’ election committees. This represents the tip of the iceberg because irregularities in mandated reporting make it difficult to trace the full extent of the money flows.

With regard to companies that did business with the city, 12 companies made at least 80 payments, amounting to more than $60,000, to city council members’ election campaigns, and these same companies received more than $13,000,000 in payments from city contracts.

I think that bears repeating – 12 companies gave city council members $60,000 and they received $13,000,000 in payments from city contracts.

That’s not the whole story –

With regard to companies seeking concessions from the city (e.g., changes in zoning), 16 companies and/or individuals made at least 40 payments to city council members’ election committees totaling nearly $39,000. 

Bear in mind that the City’s code of ethical conduct requires that City Council members -

 “Safeguard ability to make independent, objective, fair and impartial judgments by scrupulously avoiding financial and social relationships and transactions that may compromise, or give the appearance of compromising, objectivity, independence, and honesty.”

So that’s the story. Over 7 years city council members accepted nearly $90,000 (that could be traced) for their election expenses and the people/businesses that gave them this money made $13,000,000+ in city contracts and stood to earn millions more in concessions.

Let me stress, once again, technically this isn’t illegal, and while it may bear some resemblance to the Wal-Mart scandal in Mexico, no laws were broken when our city council members accepted this money, nor when they voted, nor when they failed to disclose their acceptance of the money before they voted.

Having said that, when you think about it, do you believe that the city council members upheld their ethical obligation to “scrupulously avoiding financial…transactions that…give the appearance of compromising, objectivity, independence, and honesty.”

When you accept thousands of dollars from a company and then are asked to vote on whether or not to give that company a contract, or give it to some company who hasn’t given you thousands of dollars, can you really say you can be “objective”?

In my next blog we’ll look at who these companies/people are and which city council members have been geting the most money.