After eight months of off-and-on discussion, the San Benito
County Board of Supervisors Tuesday voted 4-1 to scrap plans for a
campaign ethics committee, deciding they have already spent too
many resources on a plan that seems to be going nowhere.
Hollister – After eight months of off-and-on discussion, the San Benito County Board of Supervisors Tuesday voted 4-1 to scrap plans for a campaign ethics committee, deciding they have already spent too many resources on a plan that seems to be going nowhere.
“I think the best ethics committee is the voters. We need to abandon this effort because we’re just going to incur financial problems and I think we can spend our time on something else,” Supervisor Anthony Botelho said Tuesday morning to a round of applause from the audience.
Since August of last year, the board had been sporadically discussing the formation of an ethics committee that would look into complaints from members of the voting public concerning candidates campaigning on false facts.
“With what we have seen in the past with elections in this community, we need to have a place where people can air their concerns,” Supervisor Pat Loe told her fellow board members. Loe was the dissenting vote on the issue. “I feel our community is divided and split, and this could be part of the healing process.”
She also said it was still unclear whether the formation of an ethics committee would even have any financial impact on the county, as the only predicted costs would be for publishing meeting notices and any extra staff time spent on committee activities.
Board Chairman Reb Monaco said Wednesday it was true the county hadn’t incurred any costs yet related to the ethics committee, but added that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any costs in the future.
“I’ve always been concerned that there would be some costs involved with it,” Monaco said. “(Deputy County Counsel) Darren Bogie had said it would have costs similar to the formation of a criminal grand jury. Which are minimal, but they’re still costs.”
The idea for a campaign ethics committee originally came up last year, several months after then-Supervisor-elect Jaime De La Cruz beat incumbent Bob Cruz for the District 5 seat by 10 votes amidst accusations of voter fraud. But De La Cruz and other supervisors said they felt the time to form the committee was long gone, and even if it weren’t, a committee may not be the best way to enforce ethical campaign behavior.
Former Supervisor Richard Scagliotti said Wednesday the board’s decision to scrap the ethics committee raises questions as to the current supervisors’ motives.
“I think them scrapping the idea says it all. Why wouldn’t you want to have an ethics committee unless you had something to hide?” Scagliotti said.
But Board Chairman Reb Monaco and Supervisor Don Marcus expressed doubts over addressing potential ethical violations from a committee level.
Marcus said Wednesday he was uncomfortable with the idea of a committee that could potentially “cause us either litigation problems, or could certainly ruin the reputation of those people that are judged to be possibly unethical or unscrupulous, or whatever a committee might call them.”
“I believe… that we are kind of opening Pandora’s box (with a committee),” Monaco said Tuesday. “It’s been around for a long time; I think we just need to drop it. I would feel more comfortable if this was a grassroots effort from our community, and I haven’t seen that grassroots support, personally.”
Ethics committees are usually found in communities larger than San Benito County, Monaco said.
“I’ve done some research and most often they end up with issues that are complicated and accusatory,” he said. “I’m just not sure that this is something that would be right for a community of our size.”
Under the plan the board killed on Tuesday, the committee would have included the County Superintendent of Schools, a retired judge, a representative from the County Elections Office, a former county supervisor, a member from each of the Hollister and San Juan Bautista City Councils, a member of the San Benito Water District Board of Directors, and one representative from each of the Political Parties’ County Central Committees.
Although the supervisors declined to follow an idea of De La Cruz’ that they “table the committee indefinitely,” Botelho reasoned, “We could always come back to it later if we need to.”
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at jq*****@fr***********.com.
