exceeded your time. >> mr. stern, do you want to respond to the argument that there are some constitutional problems raised by the candidate control committee. >> clearly there is a constitutional question. there is no question about that. i can't predict what this supreme court would do, but it seems to me there is a major difference between a committee, a ballot measure committee with the berkeley case and the committee controlled by a candidate. it seems to me the court would say there is no difference between the committee control by a candidate that is making expenses to ballot measures or by the candidates behalf. as i say, you can't predict the supreme court. i think the court would uphold it, but there is a constitutional question.

>> okay. any other public comment at this point? okay. thank you very much. we appreciate your testimony and we maybe calling you on other matters if we can. >> thank you very much for inviting me to come up here. i really appreciate it. please feel free to call me at any time. i'm happy to respond. thank you very much. >> professor cook? >> thank you ksz, mr. chairman and commissioners. thank you for the opportunity to be here. i'm here with bob stern. i have been studying campaign finance issue in california since 1994 in my first job out of college. i have done research on public finances system and studied political reform in california and san francisco in particular since becoming a

political scientist in san francisco state and ucsf. i cannot offer you a legal perspective but tell you what it says pertaining to campaigns. as you know the court but the appearance of corruption in it's finance ruling. in recent years the court has interpreted corruption to a pretty narrow definition putting on bribes and kwid pro quo which is sufficiently broad to understanding corruption. but nonetheless between direct and indirect speech and therefore regulating contributions to candidates and officials. the logic of contribution san francisco limit to $7500 about it's concern about corruption of the elected official and candidates with

the appearance thereof. in my view, in law and limits to unregulated funds and a clear distortion of campaign finance law. as our payments, by the way. i realize that is a subject for another day and appreciate that san francisco has some transparency around this. at least those are transparent. to be clear i'm not accusing any individual candidate of wrongdoing nor suggest that anyone that committee is participating in this. but the appearance is striking. and the opportunity for voters to increase their cynicism and disengagement from political processes as a result of these systems of financing. committees are fairly widespread. in 2009

at the state level raised over $150 million for ballot measures since the first 8 years when this was in place. the commission asked for examples. governor schwarzenegger had the largest single contribution to that committee was $1.5 million. his expenditure also gained some public attention. he spent $523,000 from jet services out of that committee which arise in the court cases that bob mentioned. the fppc does at the state 11 at least regulate contributions to ballot measures committees controlled by candidates to qualifications, passage and defeat by ballot measures which is i understand san francisco does not yet do. still schwarzenegger went with some notable failures. he raised $17 million

for props 1 and 2 and the most recent go around and $42 million for prop 30. the largest don't is $1.5 million. one of my concern is for voters to discern or keep track of these various contributions. for example the 1.5 contribution for californians to restore and protect public safety and schools. a broad coalition of teachers, businesses, laborers and law enforcement and the governor. it was a 1.5 contribution to a jerry brown committee but from a voter you have no idea where it's coming from or where it's going to. i think you have that spreadsheet in front of you. there is some variation between them. the smallest one was the proposition e committee that raised $5,000,

$15,000 the prop b committee in 2010 that raised $1.1 million. the largest donor was $72,000. there is a lot of variation. there is one in the mayor's name a multi-measure committee. the thing that we have in common is that top donors give a lot of money. the largest to the mayor is 64,000, a donation to prop d in 2011. most of the donors give more than $500 the majority would exceed the contribution limits. the majority of the donors give directly to the candidate. and mostly contribute directly to the ballot committees not controlled by the candidates and the most that do give to candidate control committee and not. which gives to bob's point about what

they might be after and in most of the cases the canned distributed the money to other committees. it's very difficult to track where the money went and for what purpose. it gives rise to the potential for the appearance of corruption if not the possibility for reality of quid pro quo. a particular phenomenon in 1980 that began in california elected officials candidates turning to ballot campaigns to run quasi campaigns on behalf of issues. the research shows these campaigns have profound spill over effect. these ballots raise issues around the ballots and candidates have figured out if you can qualify ballot measures that voters primed on those issues and have measurable effects in terms of how they view candidates even though

they have nothing at stake. if you have same sex, affirmative action and those big ones we've seen around the country and when voters say those issues are important and with the candidate race even though they have nothing to do with the issues. the strategies are to build the issues so they have other candidates on the ballot. we also know that these things will raise the awareness of candidates. so candidates will bring ballot measures forward, take positions on these issues and then their own public awareness will rise and the ballot measure they will be seen on a different light. it's about making a campaign about your future candidacy without doing so. my policy on controlled ballot measure committee for campaign contribution. the court's concern about the free speech

rights of donors, i agree with bob that with a candidate control committee they are not speaking directly to the candidate. to me those don't raise the freedom of speech concerns. there is always an opportunity to create ballot committees, they are independent candidates to address the concerns raised in the berkeley decision and others that candidate committees have been seen by the court as not subject to this concern about corruption or the appearance of corruption. it can appear this by the candidates. that they should be allowed to the same contribution than the same that are running those. thank you. >> questions from any of the commissioners? >> dr. cook, thank you for your

testimony. if there is a limited on ballot measures, what has to be done to mitigate the concerns in your research? >> i think what you are left with is various forms of disclosure. so if you cannot limit the contributions and all you can do is make them as one is ensure that they are being spent on we don't regulate where it's being spent that is qualified or advocate for a particular ballot measure. these are, have been used in some jurisdiction in effect with a member of the committee to be coordinated with the candidate and it's limited to being advocacy on those ballot measures and you can do around disclosure. for me you are going through playing with the state data on campaign finance which is an

adventure in and of itself. it's very difficult to figure out where the money goes. san francisco has done a great job recently of trying to make the data more available to folks. it's kind of an amaze for voters. at least you need to do more around disclosure. but on the money side, if these are allowable, they have to be spent on what they are being spent for and not spend on what might raise the profile of the candidates and campaign committees and things like that. >> are you aware of any study that you know about that does this well? >> which part? >> the disclosure and the regulating of where the money goes? >> no. in general i have been generally pretty pleased with how san francisco manages it public data and campaign results and things like that.

it's gotten substantially better in the last few years. trying to dig through older disclosure reports is kind of, pretty mind numbing. it's gotten better here. frankly most jurisdictions have not prioritized in making that available to the public in a clear and timely fashion. the state is actually the worst offender. >> call me crazy but would it be unconstitutional to prevent candidate control ballot measure committees. is that a freedom of speech issue? >> it's a great question. we want candidates to be able to get

contributions. i do think you have a problem if you say candidates cannot, if do you that you can argue that a candidate can accept contributions to their own committees on behalf of the ballot measures. i don't think it would be wise. i don't think the argument, the contribution limits in san francisco are sufficiently high. the candidates can run well financed effective campaigns and they avoid the appearance of corruption. to me, the sweet spot of having them behind us, and the ability of candidates to run for campaigns and yet not so high as to be utterly meaningless. to me ieshgs think you would run into 1st amendment concerns and you have a candidate, the general purpose candidate committee i don't think you want. you are

better off having separate committees, i think that money should be regulated. >> this maybe hard for dr. cook to answer. out of all or the majority of candidate controlled ballot measure committees that ultimately achieved the desired outcome for that candidate. what percent do you think actually would be in violation if we moved forward with these restrictions what are their campaign dollar amount would be? >> i ran the numbers for san francisco. that's actually fairly easy. for example if you were to look at the committee on prop a as i

understand it the control committee on 2007. the contributions were over $500. mayor lee's contribution over 500. 700 out of the 88 donors were over $500. most of these are not within the contribution level at the local and state level. >> any other questions by the staff. any public comment specifically directed to professor cook thank you very much, professor cook. we look forward to working with you. >> gary, friends of ethics. in terms of disclosure issues that

professor just raised. i suppose it's possible to create a form for these committees to require the done or to indicate what financial interest they have before the city. we already have disclosure forms that require to you say i'm a united states citizen -- it adds that this done or had a public interest. that might be one way of doing it. a second approach what was done to the oak project which apparently is still enforcing some cities in which the office holder is banned from making a vote that has a financial interest for a donor. so instead of banning the donor, you ban the office donor. i don't know what professor cook might think of that approach, but it is in place in some other

jurisdictions. >> thank you. >> do you want to respond to that, professor cook? >> i think i need to learn more. >> in terms of pasadena enforcing it. it's not quite what mr. bush said. if an officeholder votes on a project involving money variance or a contract, the office holder is then prohibited from receiving campaign money for the next 5 years or accepting a job from the company that appeared before the office holder. this is after the fact. this is the most anti-in incumbent that i have ever seen because it doesn't apply to the challenge. in pasadena it's worked quite well, the

city attorney and city clerk advise the office holder and say you can't receive these campaign contributions after your vote. it's something to look at. it's not something to deal with the ballot committees because you are talking about the candidate control ballot committees. as i understand san francisco had it at one time and it was repealed several years ago. >> any other public comment? >> charles marsel.