Legal corruption must be prohibited

On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom dismissed the idea that there’s any conflict of interest at play when large corporations that lobby the state also happen to donate large sums of money to his wife’s nonprofit organization. That’s nonsense and the governor shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

Last week, the Sacramento Bee reported that The Representation Project, a nonprofit founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom in 2011, received $800,000 in donations over the years from big companies that routinely lobby the Newsom administration.

Some of the companies include Pacific Gas & Electric, AT&T and Comcast.

From 2011 to 2018, Siebel Newsom, who stepped down as CEO when her husband was elected governor to become creative director at the organization, was paid $2.3 million. Not bad for nonprofit work.

With all of this in mind, it only made sense, then, for him to be asked about whether there’s a conflict involved. “None whatsoever,” he responded. “There’s no correlation, period, full stop. Absolutely none.”

While common sense would lead most reasonable people to detect something unusual about all of this, the Bee had actually demonstrated obvious correlations.

“In 2015, the year Newsom announced he would run for governor, The Representation Project’s contributions increased by 30% to almost $1.6 million,” reported the Sacramento Bee’s Lance Williams and Sophia Bollag.

“Meanwhile, Representation Project donors also gave about $1.3 million to Newsom’s political committees, records show, and some have also donated hundreds of thousands to other charities at Newsom’s behest.”

While Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit might do good work, one doesn’t need to be particularly cynical to recognize that special interests and wealthy individuals with an incentive to be on the good side of those in power would see a spouse’s nonprofit as an avenue for influence buying.

But just as with the practice of “behested payments,” in which Newsom and other elected officials like Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti solicit businesses to spend money in support of certain causes, it undermines how government ought to work.

These ethics loopholes must be closed immediately.