A member of a public interest group this week publicly alleged that $36,375 of the donations received by San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus’s campaign committee were inadequately delineated in campaign finance documents provided to the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters’ Office.
Dicus’s campaign contested that assertion, which was formalized in a complaint made to the California Fair Political Practices Commission by Gail Fry, a member of the local chapter of the National Action Network, in a filing made May 11. According to the campaign and a report in the San Bernardino Sun which appeared as a posting on the newspaper’s website today, Friday May 27, the commission rejected the complaint.
The complaint takes issue less with the documentation/accounting of the money the campaign received which is laid out in the California Form 460 campaign finance reporting documents filed with the county, which the Sentinel’s independent analysis found to have mathematical integrity, but rather with the provenance of the donors or claimed donors themselves.
The complaint states that $11,500 came into Dicus’s campaign from individuals associated with businesses or directly from businesses that were either never properly registered with the California Secretary of State’s Office or registrations which have elapsed or which never existed. Further, according to the complaint, the Form 460s show the campaign receiving $24,875 from people claiming association with businesses that are either nonexistent or which are inaccurately named.
According to Gail Fry, a member of the National Action Network’s San Bernardino County chapter, neither Express Gun Locker, which donated $3,000 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign on February 28, 2022; Home Masters, which donated $500 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign on entity March 18, 2022; Kendrew, which donated $500 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign on February 17, 2022; Market Solutions, which donated $150 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign on October 1, 2021; MCR Property Management, which donated $500 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign on February 17, 2022; Rancho De Los Sumideros, which donated $2,000 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign on March 21, 2022 twice; and River Transport, which donated $4,900 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign on April 29, 2022 exist as legal entities.
Further, according to Fry, the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign is out of compliance with regard to its reporting of donations on the part of several donors insofar as California Government Code Section 84211 applies. California Government Code Section 84211 requires that “Each campaign statement required by this article shall contain all of the following information:
…g) If the cumulative amount of loans received from or made to a person is one hundred dollars ($100) or more, and a loan has been received from or made to a person during the period covered by the campaign statement, or is outstanding during the period covered by the campaign statement, all of the following:
(1) His or her full name.
(2) His or her street address.
(3) His or her occupation.
(4) The name of his or her employer, or if self-employed, the name of the business.”
The National Action Network’s May 11 filing stated Abraham Tekin of Ozel Jewelers, who donated $300 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Anthony Cinque of Rialto Jewelry, who donated $1,000 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Bernie Gossert of Party Plus, who donated $125 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Armando Ramos of Executive Fitness, who donated $4,900 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Casey Jones of Siemens, who donated $1,000 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; David Jacobson of Ozel Jewelry, who provided $300 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Earl Graham of Grahams Hay Sales, who donated $4,900 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Harry C. Crowell of Harry C. Builders, who donated $600 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Jack Betterly of Dan Smith Realty, who provided the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign with $1,500; James Strangio of HTW Wheel & Tire, who donated $500 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Peter Pirritano of Pirritano Insurance Agency, who donated $500 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Randall Lipton of the Lipton Group, Richard Lawrence of Express Gun Locker, who donated $250 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Richard Romero of Oremor Automotive Group, who donated $1,000 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Steve Pontell of National Core, who donated $250 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Vanessa Ramos of Pepito Mexican Restaurant, who donated $4,900 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; Victor Marabella of Marabella Construction, who donated $2,900 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign; and Yuri Vanetik of Dominion Partners, who donated $500 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign were all either misidentified as to the business entity they are affiliated with or were identified as affiliated with a business that was not properly registered, or in the case of Vanetik, described as an attorney when he is not a lawyer. In the case of Michael Prescher, who gave $1,000 to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign, he was not properly identified as to any business association, according to the National Action Network complaint to the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
The original complaint filed on May 11 also claimed that a $5,000 donation from Kristina Rucker exceeded San Bernardino County’s $4,900 cap on campaign donations. Fry told the Sentinel, however, that the complaint was in error on that issue, since Rucker had not in fact donated $5,000, though a double entry into the Form 460s of the $2,500 Rucker had donated on March 15, 2022 to Dicus’s campaign made it appear so.
Fry said an important part of analyzing whom a voter should support with his or her vote included knowing who is supporting the various candidates who are up for election. “That’s why it’s important to look at the campaign contributions,” she said. “Candidates and their campaigns are required under the Political Reform Act to provide the true source of their donations and they are supposed to provide the legal entity that they are known by.”
Fry said Dicus’s campaign’s failure to accurately describe the donors and their business affiliations “leaves questions as to who is really donating that money.”
The May 11 complaint, signed by Fry, stated, “All of San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus’s campaign finance records omitted street addresses for his contributors in violation of Government Code Section 84211. I obtained the 460 forms from the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters and I researched the data to verify its accuracy. In doing so, I discovered verifiable evidence that would show false information was reported [and] street addresses were omitted.”
Fry, who has worked as a journalist for various publications, including the Sentinel, noted that “In 2012, the FPPC cited that San Bernardino County had been the subject of several high-profile corruption cases” as the basis for AB 2146, which would allow “San Bernardino County and the FPPC to enter into an agreement that provides for the FPPC to enforce the county’s local campaign finance reform ordinance.”
According to the Dicus For Sheriff Campaign, “These baseless accusations against Sheriff Shannon Dicus and his campaign are nothing more than a political hit job. His campaign complies with all California Fair Political Practices Commission regulations to ensure the public has full access to his contributions. It is standard practice to redact the personal home addresses of campaign contributors, although this information is available through the FPPC should an interested party seek it. We would recommend looking at the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voter’s website to review other California Form 460 and 497LCMs. When you examine other campaign contribution forms, one can easily understand that redacting the personal addresses of contributions is standard practice. In fact, the sheriff’s opponent has done the same thing. The link can be found here: https://public.netfile.com/pub2/?aid=SBD”
The complaint itself reflects that Dicus, who is running against Cliff Harris, who was formerly a deputy with the San Bernardino County and Riverside County sheriff’s departments, has wide ranging backing, according to the campaign. The campaign hinted, without saying directly, that the National Action Network was militating on Harris’s behalf and that it was affiliated with the Democratic Party.
“Sheriff Shannon Dicus is proud to be supported by a broad group of individuals, community leaders, and small businesses throughout our region,” the campaign stated. “He believes in taking off the red and blue jerseys to focus on keeping the residents of San Bernardino County safe. Frankly, his campaign is not interested in the partisan politics that his opponents are playing.”
The campaign’s response to the Sentinel’s inquiry came in just prior to its Friday deadline. It contained as an attachment the FPPC’s letter, signed by Angela J. Brereton, the chief of the Fair Political Practices Commission’s enforcement division, rejecting the complaint.
“After review of the complaint and evidence provided, the enforcement division will not pursue an enforcement action in this matter,” the letter, dated May 26, stated. Brereton’s letter does not provide a reason for the rejection.
It its statement to the Sentinel, the campaign said, “We ask that you reach out to those groups and individuals who are making these baseless [accusations] who are, in fact, well aware that the California Fair Political Practices Commission has already determined that there are no issues with our financial reporting and are not investigating the campaign.”
The National Action Network’s press conference relating to its complaint was held on May 25 in San Bernardino, two weeks after its complaint had been lodged, while no determination by the Fair Political Practices Commission with regard to the complaint had been announced.
“In a few days, the voters of San Bernardino County will decide who they want to serve as their elected sheriff,” the campaign said. “Sheriff Shannon Dicus strongly believes that he possesses the necessary experience to run the department, add deputies to patrol our communities, and bolster reentry programs for the incarcerated.”
–Mark Gutglueck