Supervisor Paul Biane
10:00 PM PST on Tuesday, January 19, 2010
By IMRAN GHORI
The Press-Enterprise
A trip that San Bernardino County Supervisor Paul Biane took in September 2008 is the subject of a legal opinion that the district attorney’s office is seeking from the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office said Sunday that it sent a referral to the commission last week seeking an opinion on whether Biane and newly hired county administrator Greg Devereaux violated disclosure laws by failing to report gifts they received.
In a brief written statement Tuesday, Biane said he has made every attempt to be as “transparent and forthcoming as possible” on his campaign disclosure forms.
“The trip was appropriately reported in accordance with state law to the FPPC long before the referral was made and I will wait for guidance from the FPPC on this matter,” he said.
Biane did not provide further details about the trip.
According to his campaign finance records, he went to Virginia on Sept. 26, 2008. His campaign fund reimbursed Ray Crebs, of Rancho Cucamonga, $380.40 for the flight and lists the trip’s purpose as “meeting donors.”
His campaign also reimbursed Crebs $131 for “golf with donors” on Sept. 28, 2008. Daniel Richards was reimbursed $300 for a golf outing that same day.
Richards is a co-managing partner with Colonies Partners, a Rancho Cucamonga developer that has been a major donor to local candidates. Crebs is also a partner with Colonies, according to campaign documents.
Biane did not report the trip in his first finance document for that period filed Oct. 6, 2008, or on a revised form a few weeks later. The trip was not reported until another revision March 11.
His campaign forms also list expenses for hotel and meals for the California Republican Party Convention in Anaheim that same weekend for “candidate and staff.” In his statement Tuesday, Biane said those expenses were for two of his staff members.
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This all revolves around disclosure laws. The pupose of disclosure laws is to allow the public to know who cares enough about the politicos to give x amount to each candidate and to allow the voter the discretion of choosing not only the candidate, but the bedfellows.
While the proponents of these laws attempt to write the letter of the law to fulfil the grander purpose, some politicos attempt to figure out how little information they can give towards the purpose of the law while still following the letter of the law.
If Biane respects the voters and respects the purpose of the law, it is not enough to say that he went to Virginia to meet with donors. He needs to explain who these donors were and why he needed to go all the way to Virginia to meet them if his political interests were limited to San Bernardino County.
This may not be required by the letter of the law as currently written, but then, why play scrabble with this issue?
Vain imagination might lead one to speculate that the donors he was meeting were Crebs and Richards themselves. If so, then he would have had to meet with them to arrange the trip to Virginia and going to Virginia would not be necessary to meet with them. In fact, the trip would seem like the very type of perk from donors that would be required to be reported to the voters.
But that is just vain imagination. More likely there were donors who courtesy demanded that Biane meet and which could only be accomplished by going to Virginia on a trip arranged with Crebs and Richards and with the costs fronted by them to be re-imbursed later.
All that Paul Biane needs to do to show that he is in agreement with the spirit of the law and not trying to hide behind the letter of the law is to simply explain to his voters who these donors were that he was going to meet and why going to Virginia was politically manditory.
Can anyone tell me where my logic is wrong?
Paul?
Can I call you Paul?
Oh they play with the letter of the law all the time, in fact the County loves too tweak the law when it’s to their advantage and ignore it when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
The County loves to play scrabble.