Features

SACRAMENTO – The Legislature’s top Republicans on Friday sharply criticized a state commission ruling creating an exception to campaign contribution limits approved by voters last November. 

Minority leaders Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga, and Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks, said the decision “creates the absurd result that current officeholders ... can raise unlimited amounts for any purpose other than their own future election campaign.” 

“This will allow officeholders to raise money in excess of the Proposition 34 limits and transfer it to members of their own caucuses for candidate support, political parties for party building activities, ... other campaigns and ballot measures, or use it for general officeholder expenses,” they said. 

“We find this to be utterly inconsistent with the will of the Legislature that placed Proposition 34 on the ballot and the will of the voters who overwhelmingly approved it.” 

Proposition 34 put a $3,000-per-election limit on donations to legislators from most sources. There are higher limits for candidates for governor and other statewide offices. 

The state Fair Political Practices Commission said Monday that the limits don’t apply to donations raised by candidates’ campaign committees formed before the proposition took effect on Jan. 1. 

FPPC chairwoman Karen Getman said the commission decided the proposition’s fund-raising restrictions didn’t cover campaign committees set up for previous elections, “because those elections did not have any contribution limits.” 

But she said candidates who raised unlimited donations through pre-2001 committees could only spend as much of that money on their future campaigns as they could raise under Proposition 34. 

Getman also said the commission will be considering a regulation that would require candidates to phase out their pre-2001 committees after a reasonable period of time. 

Brulte, who heads Senate Republicans, and Cox, who leads Assembly Republicans, sent a letter to Democratic Gov. Gray Davis asking him to join them in urging the FPPC to reverse its decision. 

Davis’ spokesman, Steve Maviglio, did not have an immediate response.