California lawmaker fined $24,000 for Black Caucus nonprofit fundraising errors 7 years ago

A California Assembly member must pay state election officials thousands of dollars for years-old fundraising errors related to the Legislative Black Caucus’ scholarship nonprofit foundation.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission recently announced it is fining Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, $24,000 for failing to timely file reports for 94 donations to the Legislative Black Caucus Policy Institute, through which the caucus raises money for college scholarships.

The donations, or totaled more than $1.5 million, and they came from a wide variety of sources, including labor unions, Native American tribes, oil and energy companies and other business interests.

The donors contributed the money in 2017 and 2018, when Holden was chair of the Legislative Black Caucus and the Black Caucus Policy Institute, the organization’s scholarship nonprofit foundation.

“While serving as chair of the Institute, Holden maintains that he directed an internal audit to be performed, which revealed that: ‘because of staff changes and the transitions of leadership, the responsibility to track and report behested charitable contributions was not properly transferred to the incoming staff,’” the FPPC reported.

The FPPC is a five-member non-partisan board that regulates campaign finance, lobbying, conflicts of interest and governmental ethics. It defines “behested payments” as money solicited from “one individual or organization to be given to another individual or organization.”

The organization’s decision document said Holden arranged for the disclosures to be filed when he learned about the situation, although they were 20 to 276 days late.

Holden campaign spokesman Doug Herman said the assemblyman “takes responsibility as chair for filing those reports, and resolved this case with the full support of caucus members.”

“We remain committed to ensure the next generation of Black Californians have the resources they need to access a college education and reach their goals,” Herman said in a statement.

The FPPC said on-time disclosure is important because “behested payments can be a means by which donors may seek to gain favor with elected officials.” If the public cannot access them, they are “deprived of a timely opportunity to scrutinize the payments.”

“A number of donors to the Institute have business before the Legislature in virtually every legislative session,” the FPPC reported. “However, there is no indication that these behested payments were related to their legislative activities.”

During the FPPC’s March 21 meeting, chair Richard Miadich asked chief of enforcement James Lindsay why it took the organization so long to complete its investigation and whether Holden’s case was an outlier.

Lindsay confirmed this case was unusual and attributed the delay to the division having a significant amount of cases to get through and recent changes related to behested payments.

“When Chair Holden came in, he had a mess to clean up,” Miadich said prior to the FPPC’s vote on the fine. “He did that, but yet there was a violation of law, and he’s taking responsibility for it.”

Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, D-Suisun City, the current Legislative Black Caucus chair, said caucus members are splitting the $24,000 fine, with each member paying $2,000. The members prefer to help pay for the fine, rather than take money away from scholarships, she said.

“We in the caucus oversee the foundation,” Wilson said. “So we as a caucus carry the burden of the foundation.”

The Bee’s Maya Miller contributed to this story.