Billboard Challenge Focuses Spotlight on Finance Law

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

October 26 -- Tucked along the City’s tree-canopied industrial corridor, a billboard heralding that Santa Monica is “for sale by City Council” is taking on an increasingly high profile.

On October 19, attorneys for the City ordered consumer advocates responsible for the ad to remove the billboard because the trademarked Santa Monica Pier Sign was used to frame the message.

Now – two weeks before elections – the worlds’ best-known consumer advocate is speaking out for the billboard and its message opposing a City Council sponsored measure that would relax a stringent, and some say cumbersome, campaign finance reform law approved by local voters six years ago.

“You want to have a structural defense against dirty money in local politics,” former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader said in a press conference Tuesday in Santa Monica.

Across from where Nader spoke on Olympic Boulevard, large letters across the likeness of the local pier sign remain emblazoned on the billboard urging local voters to reject Proposition W – a law put forward by City Council this summer.

Experts have testified that Prop W removes the teeth from an anti-corruption law passed in 2000 -- the Oaks Initiative -- that bars City Council members from taking contributions, cash or jobs from individuals who may have benefited through some action taken by the council.

While many say the law can be difficult for incumbents cross-checking donors against their votes, the council by-passed an opportunity to piggy-back on recommendations put forth by a task force in Pasadena, which also passed the Oaks law, to help correct Byzantine reporting requirements. (see story)

Now the group sponsoring the billboard – Election Watchdog – along with the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Consumers and Taxpayers Rights, are creating some buzz.

“In 2000 I worked with the citizenry on this pioneering ordinance that prevented people who do business with the City of Santa Monica from making contributions to the City Council and we then ballyhooed this all over the country,” Nader told the Lookout News.

After six years later and a lengthy failed effort to challenge the law in the courts, Nader suggested the City not living up to its liberal roots.

“The City Council, supposedly one of the most progressive in the country, wants to enact proposition W to overturn (Oaks) and let all these companies and firms that do business with the City send money back into their campaign treasuries,” Nader said.

Nader – who won an infringement suit from Mastercard for using “priceless” in his presidential candidacy ads – said he was leery of the City’s motives to remove the billboard weeks before the election.

“Already the City Attorney has wasted $400,000 in such things as suing their own City Clerk in order to invalidate the voters’ preference of 2000, and they’re at it again,” he said.

Yet officials from the City Attorney’s office insist the request to remove the sign was not politically motivated.

“It had zero to do with the message,” said Assistant City Attorney Joe Lawrence, who wrote the October 19 letter.

“This letter is to inform your organization that it must immediately cease and desist from the unauthorized use of the Pier Sign in any form, and to remove the unauthorized advertisement immediately,” he wrote.

Four days later, Election Watchdog fired a letter back saying the billboard is protected because it is political speech and in no way can cause “confusion” or “deceive(s)” anyone – which they say are prerequisites for copyright infringement.

The group also states that the pier image is used extensively in Santa Monica by others without retribution by the City. Lawrence disagreed.

“This is not a new issue for the City,” he said, “It’s not a big deal if you ask, but they just took it.”

Lawrence said he would have sat down to discuss the matter with Election Watchdog, and may do so in the future, but he feels the group may be using the issue to draw a bigger point about their campaign.

“It’s a bit of a whipsaw,” he said. “I think its being used for political purposes.”

Meanwhile, City Attorney Marsha Moutrie said her office has been working overtime to identify instances and compiling lists of donors so incumbent candidates running for three hotly contested council seats don’t violate the existing law.