Money & Politics | Daily Report

We’ve heard some fantastic feedback this week about our story on county parties being used as middlemen in high-dollar campaign finance transactions. In case you missed it, here’s what’s been going on:

• The California Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating brothers and fellow Assembly members Bill and Tom Berryhill for their role in a series of campaign transactions that routed money through central committees before the 2008 election. The Democratic Party of Sacramento County is also under investigation for possibly failing to disclose more than $250,000 in late contributions.
• The Sacramento Bee chimed in with both an editorial calling for greater transparency and a column by Dan Walters suggesting that the Gordian Knot of California campaign regulations be chopped in favor of immediate disclosure.
• We heard from FPPC chairman Ross Johnson about problems with the campaign finance system and a few suggestions for fixing it. We also pointed out that county party committees often fail to properly disclose their contributions and expenditures.
• Our colleagues at newspapers and blogs like the Ventura County Star, the Orange County Register, the Lodi News-Sentinel, the Modesto Bee and Redcounty.com chipped in their thoughts and/or a local focus, and more follow-ups are in the works. We also had a nice conversation with the Morning Show crew at KPFA in Berkeley.

(Note to the Redcounty team: Don’t tell anyone, but we’re working diligently to prove that the sun indeed rises in the morning.)

Keep the great input coming. As always, if you see anything in the money and politics realm that you think might be worth investigating, don’t hesitate to give a holler.