I’m fine with this, with a couple of notes.
CM Julian Ramirez
Political candidates seeking office at Houston City Hall could soon face stiffer penalties for some campaign finance violations under a new proposal being considered by city officials.
Filing campaign fundraising reports late — or failing to file them at all — is a criminal offense under state and city laws and can be subject to hefty fines. But in practice, the city doesn’t enforce those rules, leading to routine violations from officeholders and their challengers alike.
A new proposal filed by Council Member Julian Ramirez seeks to encourage more timely reports by requiring the city secretary to file a sworn complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission anytime a candidate misses a deadline.
“With no penalty assessed for not meeting the deadline, filers can ignore the requirement with impunity,” the proposal reads. “Because violators are not held accountable, the public’s confidence and trust in its government is undermined.”
Ramirez is pushing the idea through Proposition A, which allows any three City Council to place an item on the city council agenda. The proposal, which is also supported by Council Members Amy Peck, Sallie Alcorn and Joaquin Martinez, must pass a legal review before being scheduled for a vote.
[…]
Under state law, contenders for Houston mayor, controller, and city council seats are required to post reports with donations and spending twice a year, with extra reports due before each election day.
In theory, violations of those rules could be addressed in two ways, Ramirez said. Complaints could be routed to the Office of the Inspector General or to the city ethics commission, but in practice, Houston has not used either mechanism to enforce its laws.
The ethics commission, in particular, does not appear to have met for at least a decade.
The result is that, in recent election cycles, up to 25% of all candidates failed to file reports of contributions and expenditures on time, or at all. In some cases, candidates only filed after being contacted for comment by the news media.
Ramirez’ proposal takes a third route, explicitly asking the state to step in.
“It shouldn’t solely be on the Chronicle to hold people accountable for not filing or for late filing,” Ramirez said.
[…]
City-specific laws, like contribution limits, will still go unchecked unless Houston pursues its own ethics enforcement, said Andrew Cates, an Austin-based attorney who regularly practices before TEC.
Other major cities, including Austin and San Antonio, generally have functioning ethics bodies to enforce rules governing everything from campaign reports to lobbyist filings.
“Kicking that responsibility over the state, that’s fine, but what are you going to do if someone breaks your city code?” Cates said.
Ramirez said he still hopes to see broader city-level reforms, such as changes to the information the inspector general could make public as the office investigates misconduct.
As I said, I’m fine with this, and kudos to CM Ramirez and the others who support this via Prop A so it can get on the agenda. But let’s keep our expectations in perspective here. One, as noted in the story, the Texas Ethics Commission is hardly a strong enforcement mechanism, as even for the most egregious matters they pursue the biggest sanctions are fines in the five-figure range, generally imposed on candidates with million dollar-plus treasuries, with no punishment that I’m aware of for not paying up. Two, as noted at the end, this is about one type of campaign finance sin only, with no mechanism for bad information in reports, donations in excess of statutory limits, shady PACs, and so on. Both of these can also be investigated as criminal offenses, and the most serious cases are, but an awful lot slides by because there’s no real enforcement mechanism. The local ethics commission, if rebuilt and given some actual power, is probably the best bet here. I’ll take CM Ramirez at his word that this is a first step, so we’ll see where we go from here.
I would also note that in my experience, as someone who checks campaign finance reports regularly, the biggest offenders are the least serious and organized candidates. Look at the list given in this story. With the exception of former CM Richard Nguyen, who was a cipher in his own right, none of those people raised any money, many of them had no online campaign presence, and none of them got a noticeable number of votes. Allowing for some discretion, in who should be complained about and who can be safely ignored, would reduce the number of frivolous complaints and make it more likely the TEC will pursue the ones that matter. Again, having a local ethics commission would probably be the better way to go.
This ordinance is still a few weeks away from being considered by Council, so there’s time for improvements. I’m happy to see us talking about this, and I’m hopeful this can be made better before it’s voted on. Campos has more.
Wasn’t Letitia Plummer a repeated offender?
This brought back quite a few memories.
I ran for Houston City Council District F in 2009, and one of the things that surprised me most about the experience was how casually some candidates apparently treated requirements that I assumed everybody running for public office would take seriously.
I was probably annoyingly organized about it. Every campaign finance report and every document I was required to submit was complete, accurate and on time. I also chose to collect the required voter signatures to get my name on the ballot rather than simply paying the $500 filing fee.
The people in the City Secretary’s office actually commented on my filings. They told me everything I submitted was flawless, including the petition signatures. They didn’t have to correct a single thing, reorganize anything, figure out what I meant, or come back to me for missing information.
I remember asking, somewhat naively, “You mean everybody doesn’t turn it in like this?”
Apparently not.
They told me some candidates submitted paperwork in such a mess that staff had to spend considerable time just sorting through it and figuring out what had actually been submitted. Others filed well past the deadline, and some simply didn’t file required reports at all.
That amazed me then, and it still does.
To me, these filings are more than bureaucratic paperwork. They’re a small test of some of the qualities we ought to expect from someone asking to be entrusted with public office: attention to detail, organization, discipline, respect for deadlines and accountability.
If you can’t properly complete relatively simple campaign finance forms, keep track of filing dates and account for the money coming into and going out of your own campaign, how are voters supposed to believe you’re going to carefully read, understand and help construct a multibillion-dollar city budget?
And I always thought the filing fee presented another interesting little test.
I could have simply written a $500 check and put my name on the ballot. Instead, I collected signatures. Besides saving the money, it allowed me to talk directly with voters, hear what was on their minds and get a much better sense of what people throughout the district actually cared about.
You’ll hear plenty of candidates promise that once elected they’re going to eliminate government waste and carefully safeguard every taxpayer dollar. But if someone doesn’t particularly care about spending $500 when there is a perfectly legitimate way to avoid spending it, while at the same time meeting and listening to the people they’re asking to represent, I think it’s fair to wonder how suddenly frugal they’ll become when the money they’re spending belongs to somebody else.
There was another issue in that race that taught me something about election laws and enforcement: residency.
We had serious residency questions involving two candidates. Houston required a district council candidate to have lived in the district for the preceding 12 months. That requirement is there for a reason. A district council member isn’t supposed to merely know where the district is on a map. You’re supposed to live there, experience the same services, streets, drainage, crime, trash collection and other problems your constituents live with.
Yet it seemed that practically nobody charged with enforcing the requirement was terribly interested in whether it was actually being followed.
Al Hoang, who ultimately won the seat, also had campaign finance reports with numerous problems. I filed a complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission over his reporting.
And here’s where the whole idea of “enforcement” becomes almost comical.
The Ethics Commission eventually found credible evidence of violations. They specifically determined that the violations were not merely technical or de minimis.
The punishment?
A $500 civil penalty.
And the final order came in December 2011, more than two years after the election he had already won.
So what exactly was the deterrent?
What was the incentive for another candidate to say, “I’d better get this right the first time”?
I spent the time to comply with the law. I kept accurate records, met the deadlines, filled out the forms correctly and made sure the City Secretary didn’t have to spend taxpayer-funded staff time cleaning up my paperwork.
Another candidate could get it wrong, win the election anyway, serve in office, and years later get a $500 slap on the wrist.
That’s not meaningful enforcement. By that point, the election is history.
And the same principle applies to residency requirements. If we’re going to have these rules, enforce them. If nobody is going to enforce them when they actually matter, then why pretend they’re requirements?
I don’t think the answer is fewer rules. I think the answer is rules that are clear, reasonable and enforced promptly enough that following them actually matters.
And perhaps the most depressing part of looking back on that campaign is what I ran on.
My campaign was called “Back to Basics.” I talked about drainage and flooding, repairing streets, reducing duplication in law enforcement, improving police response times, funding more police cadet classes, dependable trash collection and expanding recycling.
Seventeen years later, they’re still talking about an awful lot of the same things.
So I’m certainly in favor of stronger enforcement of campaign finance deadlines, but I think this proposal raises a bigger issue.
Running a city is largely about competently handling thousands of details, deadlines, documents, regulations, budgets and competing responsibilities. Campaigning for the job gives voters a small preview of how someone handles those things.
If someone wants the responsibility of helping run the City of Houston, properly handling the relatively simple responsibilities of being a candidate seems like a pretty low bar to clear.
And if there is effectively no consequence for failing to clear it, we shouldn’t be surprised when people stop bothering to try.
CM Kubosh had the most egregious violations so much so that Channel 11 bothered to cover it.
Attorney General Ken Paxton is supposed to push to collect the fines issued by the Texas Ethics Commission, but I am not aware of any real efforts to do so. Politicians of all stripes owe money. State Rep. Ron Reynolds owes the most: $77,405. Nora Stephanie Morales, who ran for state rep in Houston is second at $45,300. Other local Houston folks owing include Joseph L. Trahan, Jr. who ran against Sen. Molly Cook, Larry McKinzie running for state board of education, Melissa Morris who ran for state senator against Sen. Boris Miles, Jared Woodfill who ran for state rep against Rep. Lacey Hull, Rep. Jarvis Johnson, Rep. Harold Dutton, and even Melissa Noriega and Fran Watson who each still owe $500. I could not find City of Houston candidates on the “Delinquent Filer List.”
@mainstream Finding out why the outstanding fines haven’t been paid may best be a query directed to Chris Flood (Chair), Patrick W. Mizell (Vice Chair), Randall H. Erben, Richard S. Schmidt, Joseph O. Slovacek, Sean Gorman, Geanie Morrison, and Mark Strama, the eight folks on the Ethics Commission.