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Since California’s gay, lesbian and bisexual communities have won most of their rights and freedoms, the transgender and gender non-conforming community are next in line to be included in society and the law. Religious groups who fought unsuccessfully against non-heterosexuals have switched now to making donations scapegoating the people who do not follow traditional gender norms. Because transgender people are now emerging at younger ages, former Assemblyman Tom Ammiano wrote AB 1226 to expand educational opportunities to transgender and gender non-conforming youth. This scared groups such as the Pacific Justice Institute and Calvary Chapel Chino Hills into bringing forth the Privacy for All campaign to try to repeal AB 1226 by using fear as a donation-generating machine.
A problem Privacy for All had was their complete ignorance of campaign disclosure laws in California. They amassed $7,120 in fines from 2013-2014, and Calvary Chapel Chino Hills which helped lead the campaign also had unpaid fines as of November 2015 of $2440 (recently paid off.) Their problem was failing to file timely campaign finance reports as required by law. With Privacy for All it was a failure to file 460 campaign finance disclosure forms, and with Calvary Chapel it was failing to register as a major donor for their 2013 donations.
My suggestion for our legislators for 2016 is to write a bill that prohibits committees such as Privacy for All to be able to file a ballot measure to the Attorney General if they owe money to the FPPC for prior fines. It is unfortunate that these groups were able to try again last year while still owing money. If these hating deadbeats want to try again they should pay their fines first.
Also, I’d like to see committees stop filing their 460 campaign finance disclosure forms late in attempt to mask their fundraising or lack of fundraising. I personally may not have raised much in past campaigns, but I still filed as timely as possible to the Secretary of State office my required reports. John Fugatt, treasurer of Privacy for All, should be ashamed of himself for allowing so many of his committees to have late campaign finance reports. The second part of this proposed bill would require that if a committee is late more than twice, fines would be triple during the third and subsequent offense in a given year.
Privacy for All still hasn’t learned their lesson. Their report of November 2, 2015, was not even received by the Secretary of State office as of December 2015. The committee was boasting over getting their signatures in, I was wondering if they actually had the momentum to qualify or not, and I found out that they were hiding the information. People have respect for candidates and issue groups when they are honest to their donors, volunteers and supporters. Their 497 late major contributions were filed, but it was ironic that they never bothered to file the November 2nd 460 document electronically which would have helped to satisfy the disclosure rules. Instead of ‘Privacy for All’, 2016 needs Disclosure for All. California will be in better shape for this.
The FPPC is kind of like asset forfeiture, guilty till proven innocent, because it operates under civil law, where we do not have the protections of the criminal law.