Legally swapping campaign donations
Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, and other members of Congress have found a way around some campaign contribution limits by exchanging donations with each other.
It's called donor-swapping, and it works this way: If, for instance, Peters’ wife or parents reach their contribution limit of $5,000 to his campaign, they write a check for, say, $2,000 to another campaign. And that campaign, in turn, writes a check for the same amount to Peters’ campaign.
It’s all legal under Federal Election Commission regulations and fairly common among the families of wealthier politicians, according to the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.
Peters' family has exchanged several donations with the family of Rep. Ami Bera, D-Elk Grove, and with the campaigns of Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, and former Rep. Kevin Strouse, D-Pa.
Bera, whose father was recently convicted of making illegal donations to his son's campaign, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that he contributed to Peters' campaign because Peters is one of his closest friends in Congress, and he regularly faces challenging races.
The New York Times reported that successful incumbents in safe congressional seats raised $1.3 million to keep their seats in 2012, while those who held their seats with less than 60 percent of the vote raised $2.3 million. That averages out to raising $2,315 a day, according to MapLight, a nonpartisan research organization that studies campaign financing.
SDUT: Scott Peters and congressional pals swap donations
SDPD still uses curfew sweeps
Police in Los Angeles and San Bernardino stopped sweeping the streets for curfew violators years ago.
But the San Diego Police Department still uses the enforcement strategy to keep kids out of trouble. Not surprisingly, San Diego County’s share of curfew arrests statewide grew from 7 percent in 2005 to 30 percent in 2014, according to the California Department of Justice.
Police departments in other cities say they have cut back or eliminated sweeps because the tactic creates barriers instead of building bridges with the community. Other groups question whether sweeps are a good use of limited resources.
Elsewhere in the county, Chula Vista doesn’t use sweeps, and Escondido runs one or two in the summer.
The San Diego Police Department offers outreach programs along with the sweeps it conducts in each of the city's nine police districts. The department maintains that combining the programs with sweeps during the city's 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew keeps juveniles from committing crimes or being victims. Most juveniles arrested go through diversion programs, rather than the juvenile justice system.
The department does not track data on the sweeps’ effectiveness, or how often they occur.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are concerned that communities of color are disproportionately affected by the sweeps.
SDUT: Are San Diego's curfew sweeps obsolete?
SDUT: Curfew arrests affect some groups more than others
Poway Unified to Collins: You're so fired
Poway Unified Superintendent John Collins, placed on administrative leave in April, was fired this week with a year left to go on his contract and a long list of allegations against him.
The allegations follow a forensic audit that cites Collins for filing litigation without board approval (four restraining orders), interfering with the district’s investigation into his financial dealings, unprofessional conduct, dishonesty and misappropriation of public funds, most especially through the district’s revolving cash fund.
The board alleges Collins used the cash fund to pay himself for vacation he hadn't earned at times that were not allowed, collected an extraordinary amount of longevity pay inappropriately and attempted to increase longevity pay for all managers, including himself.
Collins was the second-highest paid K-12 public school educator in the state and enjoyed robust support from the teachers’ union.
Rather than pay off the remainder of his contract, the school district could require Collins to repay as much as $345,000 in what auditors have said is unauthorized pay.
VOSD: Why Poway Unified Fired Its Superintendent
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