Official, unions hit with campaign fines

A failure to identify who was paying for thousands of automated campaign calls last year supporting Oakland City Councilwoman Annie Campbell Washington prompted thousands of dollars in fines for her campaign and the political arms of the Oakland police and firefighters unions, officials said.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission approved the fines last week for robocalls made before the November 2014 elections. The recorded and automatically dialed calls urged voters to support Campbell Washington, mentioning she was supported by police and firefighters.

The messages failed, however, to specifically mention who had authorized the calls and who was paying for them — a violation of the commission’s political campaign regulations. Campbell Washington’s campaign treasurer also purportedly failed to report campaign expenditures as required on two occasions.

The commission fined the campaign $3,500 for the violations. Political action committees for the International Association of Firefighters Local 55 and the Oakland Police Officers Association were each fined $2,000 for allegedly not identifying themselves as the funding source for robocalls.

Campbell Washington, whose campaign has already paid the fine, said Wednesday she took responsibility for the errors. She said they were the result of a campaign involving grassroots volunteers unfamiliar with the rules.

“I am proud that after a fine-toothed-comb investigation by the FPPC of my entire campaign, they found that there was no intent to mislead the public and these were inadvertent technical errors,” she said.

A report on the commission’s investigation said the offenses were apparently unintentional and “not meant to deceive the voting public.”