[EL] FPPC Budget and independence

[Allison Hayward]

Greetings, fans of California campaign finance regulation, and/or fans of independent political regulatory agencies:


You might be interested in the following:


LAO Report on FPPC Budget & Workload

Dated May 7, 2018.

Requested by Senate Budget Subcommittee #4 on April 5, 2018



http://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3822


In brief - it's budget season in California!  And, the FPPC has a budget, about half of which is guaranteed (by the Political Reform Act, which means immune from amendment by ordinary legislation), and about half of which is not.  The Senate Budget Committee asked the Leg Analyst's office (LAO) to review the FPPC's operations, to better inform the committee on the adequacy of the FPPC's budget and budget change requests.  It is thought by many that the chair of the committee was seeking to justify budget increases, by the way (I am not in a position to say, myself).


Oops.  The LAO report isn't flattering. Go ahead and read it at the link above. (Behold the self executing nature of the law of unintended consequences!)


At our open meeting Thursday, the Chair objected to the LAOs requests for additional information, reporting and performance benchmarks, observing that such requests undermined the independence of the FPPC.  If people are really interested, I can dial up the part of the Youtube record where this discussion occurs.


Clearly there is a tension between "independence" and "oversight."  I had always thought the portion of the FPPC's funds that are guaranteed under the Political Reform Act was the "independence" part (for lack of a better label), and to the extent the agency gets even more money from the state, the use of that money can be subject to limitation and oversight just as any other agency's would be.  I am not pretending that the guaranteed money is sufficient to execute the FPPC's current mission with all its bells and whistle and future obligations and whatnot, only that there has been a balance struck.


I offer this information for what interest it might be to people (particularly academics), and also to inquire how other state's campaign/ethics regulators are overseen and budgeted.


Thanks,


Allison
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