Santa Rosa firefighters fined over political calls

Santa Rosa has fined its firefighters union $2,000 for violating the city’s new rules restricting political robocalls.

The twin $1,000 penalties were imposed last week for recorded calls attacking City Council candidates Chris Coursey and Lee Pierce for their positions on overhauling Measure O, the public safety sales tax.

The 22,381 calls made Oct. 25 claimed the two candidates “want to make Santa Rosa a more dangerous place to live.”

At the time, Coursey called that an “outrageous lie” and “beyond the pale” and lamented that independent groups were “poisoning” what had been a clean campaign by the candidates.

The former Press Democrat columnist and commuter rail spokesman, who eschewed robocalls during his first run for public office, went on to become the top vote-getter in the election and is now vice mayor. Pierce came in sixth in the contest for three open council seats.

On Friday, Coursey said he was pleased the city was enforcing its new ordinance.

“It’s too bad you can’t make ’em tell the truth, but you can at least make ’em follow the rules,” Coursey said.

Concerned about loopholes in state law, the City Council in May passed a strict new set of local regulations covering political robocalls.

The rules require any group that funds more than 200 such calls within a 30-day period to report the activity, no matter the cost. State rules required only people or groups spending $1,000 or more to report their activities, meaning it was possible for people to fund significant numbers of robocalls without ever publicly disclosing their identities.

The new rules also require robocalls to give recipients the chance to opt out of future calls. The calls also must say who paid for them, including the person’s telephone number, and include a statement that they were not approved by a candidate or committee controlled by a candidate. Transcripts of calls also need to be disclosed to the city clerk within 48 hours.

Soon after the Oct. 25 call, Coursey filed a complaint with City Clerk Terri Griffin claiming that the calls violated the new rules in two ways: they didn’t give people a way to opt out and they didn’t include the disclaimer that the committee, I.A.F.F. Local 1401 - Committee for a Safe Santa Rosa, was not affiliated with any candidate or candidate-controlled committee. City officials agreed, and fined the group once for each way the Oct. 25 calls violated the rules.

At the time, union president Tim Adoudara blamed the error on an “issue with our vendor.” He did not respond to requests for comment this week.

City Attorney Caroline Fowler investigated the complaint. She asked Aboudara to provide proof that he had instructed the group’s vendor to include the opt-out option in the call, but he never did so, according to her Dec. 5 letter. She also noted that a transcript of the call filed with the city contained no such opt-out language.

Four days after that first call, on Oct. 29, the union made a second call to nearly 27,000 homes. The new call replaced the claim that the candidates “want to make Santa Rosa a more dangerous place to live” with the claim that they “are dangerous for Santa Rosa” because they support lower public safety funding which “could result in slower medical response times, putting people’s lives in danger at the time they need help the most.”

That second call did give recipients the chance to opt out of future calls and included other required disclosures. The union reported spending a total of $975 on the two calls, just under the $1,000 limit that would have triggered a more detailed filing under state law.

The city code calls for fines of “$1,000 for each violation” of the local robocall regulations.

The city does not consider each individual call to be a violation of the ordinance, Griffin said. If it did, that would result in millions in fines, which was not the council’s intention in enacting the law, she said.

There is a provision in the ordinance allowing a group that is unaware of the city’s robocall laws to “cure” the violation and escape fines at the discretion of the city clerk as long as the group “has not received prior notification from the city clerk regarding said requirements” and fixes the problem within two days. That provision was meant to apply to out-of-area political committees that may be unaware of Santa Rosa’s rules, Griffin said.

During the recent campaign, Aboudara worked closely with local political consultant Nick Caston. The union endorsed his council candidate, Ashle Crocker, including recording a robocall supporting her.

Caston and his wife, Councilwoman Erin Carlstrom, also were heavily involved in the failed firefighter-backed Yes on Measure N campaign, which sought to expand the city’s utility users tax to include cellphones.

Caston said he had nothing to do with the robocalls against Coursey and Pierce, however, and had “absolutely no clue” who did.

“I very much avoid having those types of conversations,” Caston said.

State law prohibits cooperation between candidate campaigns and those of independent groups involved in election activities.

Caston noted that there are plenty of vendors who facilitate robocalls, and said it is neither difficult nor expensive to record and send them.