The California Charter Schools Lobby Masks Influence And Effect Through Myriad “Independent Expenditure Committees”, As Difficult To Follow As A Shell Game
The Charter industry lobby has expended a total of $91.4 million dollars in California between 11/18/08 and 12/31/18, according to political financial information stored online by the Secretary of State through “Cal-Access”.
This figure is likely low but its variability is hard to calculate. For example the figure could erroneously include administrative replicates, but it may also include double-billing or distinct filings indistinguishable due to cursory reporting requirements. The figure omits Cal-Access “late filings”, imprecisely integrated into “regular” filings, and thereby potentially significantly under-estimates the true total.
Evolution in name alone
What is so confusing is the multi-stage process by which the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) lobby dispenses its largesse. There is a direct process and a derivative one. Over this time period CCSA has opened 25 distinct “Recipient Committees”, entities raising contributions from others, nine of which have been subsequently terminated. These 25 Committees have operated under 54 different names. Some of this multiplicity is reasonable because the lobbying effort is state-wide and different Committees will make expenditures to different local issues and candidates. But some of it is a succession of evolving names associated with a specific Committee. Sure, it all traces back to the same ideological pot of gold so while the zeitgeist shifts, the named Committee can just get a slight upgrade in verbiage since the spigot is unchanged. But it feels shifty in intention too, as if the Committee-As-Palimpsest were a deliberate effort to overwrite and obscure the group’s underlying, persistent and singular, special interest. (table 1).
Fewer than half of the numbered Committees have any expenditures associated CONTINUE READING: The California Charter Schools Lobby Masks Influence And Effect Through Myriad “Independent Expenditure Committees”, As Difficult To Follow As A Shell Game – redqueeninla