After having placed the matter on hold for two months during which the State of California’s political watchdog agency sought and ultimately failed to work out some form of compromise terms with Adelanto City Councilman Daniel Ramos, the California Political Fair Practices Commission next week will take up once again its staff’s proposal that it impose on Ramos one of the largest campaign finance reporting penalty assessments against a local officeholder in state history.
A default notice issued to Ramos in May called for the levying of a $57,500 fine on him and/or his various campaign operations. Next week, based on Ramos’s unwillingness to make acknowledgments, comply with proposed conditions to be imposed and accept restrictions with regard to ongoing and future fundraising activity offered to him over a more than two-month negotiating period, the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) is scheduled to proceed with the $57,500 assessment it was set to accept at its June 13 meeting.
Ramos is currently Adelanto’s mayor pro tem and is now engaged in a reelection campaign for the November 5 election in which he is seeking another four-year term on the council. Beginning late last year, despite numerous notifications and posted requests that he do so, Ramos did not submit campaign fund accounting paperwork for his unsuccessful 2018 campaign for the Victorville City Council and he had further repeatedly failed to provide an accounting of his victorious 2020 campaign for the Adelanto City Council.
All told, it is estimated that Ramos collected and then spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $57,000 on both of those electoral efforts. An exact figure is not available because he has not filed the State Form 460 documents used to itemized donations to, expenditures from, loans to and from and nonmonetary contributions to, or in-kind payments relating to his electioneering efforts.
At its May 16, 2024 meeting, the California Fair Political Practices Commission issued a pre-notice default against Ramos, his Ramos for City Council 2018 committee, the Committee to Elect Daniel Ramos Adelanto City Council 2020, Ricardo Ramos and Arley Arsineda.
The commission, after considering input from Alex Rose, the FPPC’s senior counsel, and Ann Flaherty, the commission’s special investigator, voted to proceed in the action against Ramos, his committees, Ricardo Ramos, and Arsineda.
According to Rose and Flaherty, “Ramos for City Council 2018 and Committee to Elect Daniel Ramos Adelanto City Council 2020 are Daniel Ramos’ candidate-controlled committees. Arsineda served as the Adelanto committee’s treasurer. The committees, Daniel Ramos, and Arsineda failed to timely file a statement of organization, sixteen semi-annual campaign statements, and four pre-election campaign statements, in violation of Government Code Sections 84103, 84200, 84200.5. (13 counts). Additionally, the Adelanto Committee, Daniel Ramos, and Arsineda failed to establish, maintain, and utilize a campaign bank account, in violation of Government Code Section 85201 (1 count). Total Proposed Penalty: $57,500.”
The original filing by the FPPC did not specify Ricardo Ramos’s role in what had occurred, although unverified information has it he was involved in the 2018 effort to get Ramos elected in Victorville.
Within a month after the Fair Political Practices Commission staff began what it represented as final preparations to impose the fine, Ramos initiated discussions with the agency over how he could to cure the reporting violations he had amassed over the last six years. On June 11, the Fair Political Practices Commission staff agreed to remove the ratification of the $57,500 fine against Ramos from the board’s June 13 meeting agenda, with the understanding that some order of acknowledgement of the violations that had taken place would be made and an arrangement involving a possible fine reduction could be worked out with Ramos.
According to the May 16, 2024 agenda for the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), the seriousness of the violation and Ramos’s failure and repeated refusals to the city clerks’ offices in both Victorville and Adelanto, ongoing for more than five-and-a-half years, to provide an accounting of where he received his campaign funding and how he spent it is indicated by the amount of the proposed fine.
The largest fine ever imposed by the California Fair Political Practices Commission was one of $350,000 on State Senator Carole Migden. Migden, who held a state office, engaged in numerous violations of not only campaign accounting regulations but misused and misappropriated political funds, converted campaign funds to personal profit, used campaign money for personal expenses, failed to itemize political expenses, received contributions before officially declaring her candidacy, made inaccurate disclosures of cash payments and improperly reported campaign finances.
In researching the 3,349 outstanding fines levied by the FPPC which that agency is yet seeking to collect, the Sentinel could not find any fine levied on a local politician exceeding $5,000. The $57,500 fine proposed against Ramos is more than any single fine the Fair Political Practices Commission is yet seeking to collect from years past, the vast majority of which fall under $1,000. With very few exceptions, the larger fines imposed by the FPPC are on political action committees, recipient committees, independent expenditure committees, lobbyists and major donors. Many of the largest outstanding fines go back several years.
The largest fine outstanding is one for $46,720 imposed on a recipient committee which the FPPC has been trying to collect since 2016. Other yet uncollected fines were for $29,290; $21,020; $20,520; $19,670; $13,730; $10,650; $10,000; $9,750; $9,650; $9,090; and $9,050.
In the agenda posted for the upcoming August 15 meeting at which the FPPC Board is scheduled to take up the fine relating to Ramos are five other matters to involve fines yet to be levied, including one for a total proposed penalty of $7,500, another for $22,000, another for $29,000 and one for $16,000. One case, that of Dominic Caserta/Caserta for Supervisor 2018 involves a proposed fine greater than what is to be imposed on Ramos. Caserta, who served as the treasurer of his campaign effort, is accused of using money donated to his political war chest intended to assist him in being elected Kern County supervisor for a host of expenditures unrelated to his campaign, including payments to his wife, complicated by his failure to provide adequate accounting of how the funds were being spent. The proposed fine in Caserta’s case is $65,000.
The failure of the FPPC staff and Ramos to come to terms over the matter means the board’s previous findings are again operative.
The May vote relating to the default judgment against Ramos signified that “there was already a finding of violation of the political reform act that had been organized and presented as a stipulated case,” according to Jay Wieringa, the spokesman for the FPPC. “That there was a default signifies that somewhere along the line, he [Ramos] failed to participate in the inquiry or ignored a settlement proposal. We routinely seek a settlement, which serves as a public acknowledgment and admission of the violation of the Political Reform Act. This extends back to 2018, so he has had a lengthy history of trying to avoid accounting for those campaign expenditures.”
The Sentinel has emailed Ramos asking him to provide a statement with regard to the California Fair Political Practices Commission’s indication of its proposed action regarding his 2018 and 2020 campaign fund activities and accounting deficiencies. The Sentinel sought from Ramos whether he considered the mistakes to have been inadvertent and what steps he has instituted to prevent a recurrence. The Sentinel asked if he considered the areas highlighted by the FPPC with regard to his campaign funds to be minor violations and/or mere technical violations. The Sentinel asked if there was a deliberate element in his campaign reporting shortcomings, clarifying the question by asking if he had concern about the public perception or the potential for public misperception if some of the donors to his campaign were disclosed and whether there were any donors he could now identify about whom or which he in particular had such concerns.
Ramos has not responded to those inquiries.
According to the agenda for the August 15 meeting of the Fair Political Practices Commission, the matter of Ramos for City Council 2018, Committee to Elect Daniel Ramos Adelanto City Council 2020, Daniel Ramos and Arley Arsineda now excludes Ricardo Ramos.
Rose, the commission’s attorney, and Flaherty, the investigator, reiterated that Ramos and his campaign “failed to timely file a statement of organization, sixteen semi-annual campaign statements, and four pre-election campaign statements, in violation of Government Code Sections 84103, 84200, 84200.5. (13 counts). Additionally, the Adelanto Committee, Daniel Ramos, and Arsineda failed to establish, maintain, and utilize a campaign bank account, in violation of Government Code Section 85201 (1 count). Total Proposed Penalty: $57,500.”
-Mark Gutglueck