CA governments cannot shake off the image of persistent corruption

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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Susan Shelley, a columnist for the Orange County Register, recently reminded her readers — and the entire state — that California has a corruption problem.

She primarily focused on a series of corruption cases involving Southern California politicians, particularly members of the Los Angeles City Council.

But it has touched others outside the Southland, including a recent scandal involving Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff indicted in an alleged scheme to launder political campaign funds for personal gain and the indictment of Oakland’s mayor for bribery.

California was proverbially corrupt after becoming a state in 1850. The magical lawlessness of the age of lawlessness had become an equally unseemly political spirit. The Southern Pacific Railroad was proverbially controlled by the state legislature, using its influence to gain control of vast tracts of land and force farmers to pay usurious freight rates.

At the beginning of the 20^th century a movement for political reform blossomed, led by Hiram Johnsonthe dominant political figure of the era. The creation of railroad regulatory agencies and other entrenched interests; the adoption of powers of initiative, referendum, and recall to circumvent corrupt legislatures, and the shift to nonpartisan local governments appeared to limit institutional corruption.

However, it did not disappear. Throughout the 20^th century in California, epidemics broke out periodically, usually when the law caught up with criminals. The most famous case was that of Arti Samisha lobbyist for liquor and other interests who openly boasted in the 1930s and 1940s of his control of the legislature.

Samish finally went to jail, several new laws were passed, and Californians were once again told their governments were clean. However, the illusion was shattered in the 1980s when the FBI conducted a sting operation at the state Capitol.

Agents posed as businessmen seeking special legislation for a shrimp processing project. They videotaped lawmakers, officials and lobbyists offering to help with bribes. Quite a few people got caught up in what was called the “Shrimpgate” ended up behind bars.

Meanwhile, something was happening among the small towns surrounding the city of Los Angeles. Many of them were actually captured by crooked politicians who sold favors such as franchises and contracts to the highest bidders and voted themselves generous salaries and pensions.

The syndrome was first discovered in 2010 series of Los Angeles Times articles about the small town of Bell, revealing how the town manager and other officials essentially robbed the town.

Since then, similar scandals involving other small cities in Los Angeles County and at least one in Anaheim, a city in Orange County, appeared. When Anthony Rendon was speaker of the state assembly, he once called the San Gabriel Valley area he represented a “corridor of corruption.”

More recently, as Susan Shelley’s column points out, the Los Angeles City Council has seen a series of corruption prosecutions alleging that its members sold services or steered city contracts to organizations that benefited them financially.

Councilman Curran Price is currently facing corruption charges for various schemes that prosecutors say put money in his pocket.

Meanwhile, Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson faces federal chargesincluding bank fraud, allegedly falsifying documents to obtain a pandemic-era federal business loan and an alleged scheme to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars from a campaign account that Xavier Becerra, a former Biden cabinet member and attorney general, maintained.

A former Becerra employee, Sean McCluskey, and Sacramento lobbyist Greg Campbell have pleaded guilty while Williamson awaits trial.

Although political figures end up behind bars when their schemes are exposed, that doesn’t seem to deter others from lining their pockets, so one has to wonder how much corruption goes undetected.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.