Robocall flap highlights passions over Santa Rosa’s rent control referendum

The political campaign committee advocating for Santa Rosa’s rent control law conducted a robocall this month urging voters to participate in a “telephone town hall” with Councilwoman Julie Combs about the June 6 referendum vote.

Now some rent control opponents, including several political veterans in the city, say the action didn’t appear to comply with the local rules governing campaign robocalls - rules that Combs, a strong rent control supporter, was instrumental in getting passed in 2014.

Combs and officials with the pro-rent control committee, Fair and Affordable Housing - Yes on C, say they didn’t need to follow the city’s robocall ordinance, which requires the callers to disclose who paid for them and give people a way to opt out of future calls.

The calls were outside the bounds of the robocall ordinance and complied with city rules because they were factual, not advocacy, Combs and her allies said. A city attorney has echoed that finding based on her review of the robocall script.

“This was informational,” Combs said. “It wasn’t intended to influence people to vote a certain way.”

But former Mayor Scott Bartley, who received two voicemail messages at home, said he was surprised to get the calls because Combs has always been stridently opposed to robocalls.

“I just chuckled because of the hypocrisy,” said Bartley, who opposes the city’s rent control law, passed after he left the council. “She’s saying ‘I’m totally against robocalls until it’s something that I’m for, then I’m happy to do it.’?”

The squabble underscores just how divisive the record-breaking fight over the city’s rent control ordinance is becoming. The competing Measure C campaigns are on track to shatter all campaign spending records, with more than $939,000 in total reported donations earlier ?this month. Opponents backed ?by real estate interests enjoy a ?nearly 7-to-1 fundraising edge over supporters of the city’s rent control law.

In addition to the robocall flap, the campaigns have complained that each others’ signs contain technical violations of rules governing the visibility of statements indicating who paid for them.

The Yes on C campaign paid for the calls as a way to get people to participate in a “telephone town hall” on May 10. Combs’ voice can be heard on a recording telling people that “this is an important election to help address our local housing crisis” and urging people to participate in the call.

“The call does not state a position. It’s just an invitation,” Combs said.

The hourlong call was a question-and-answer format during which Combs fielded questions from callers about the controversial measure. She said she tried hard to present the city’s position factually, but also acknowledged that, when asked, she expressed her support for rent control and just-cause eviction rules.

Combs said she ran the script of the robocall by City Clerk Daisy Gomez, who agreed it seemed nonpartisan, and therefore was not required to comply with robocall regulations.

Gomez confirmed that the text she reviewed seemed not to be advocating anything.

“It looked like it was fine, as long as it wasn’t a call to support or oppose the measure,” Gomez said.

But Herb Williams, a veteran Santa Rosa political consultant, calls Combs’ explanation a “flimsy excuse” to get around the very ordinance she claimed was needed to increase transparency in local political campaigns.

“She was campaigning, any way she wants to look at it,” said Williams, who is an opponent of rent control but is not working on the No on C campaign. “I’m disappointed that Councilwoman Combs doesn’t practice what she preaches.”

Williams is highly attuned to the robocall issue because he’s a believer in them as a low-cost tool to help clients reach large numbers of voters, and has worked hard to comply with the law himself, he said.

So when he heard Combs’ recorded voice urging people to participate because the June 6 ballot measure was to “help address our local housing crisis,” Williams knew the Yes on C campaign had paid for it and felt the call needed to contain disclosures it lacked.

Santa Rosa city code defines a robocall as “any single recorded telephone message made in support of or opposition to a City Council candidate(s) or City ballot measure(s) and placed to 200 or more individuals or households within a 30-day period.”

Such calls have to provide both an “opt-out mechanism” allowing residents to request to be added to a do-not-call list for future calls. They also are not allowed to display inaccurate numbers on caller ID screens.

There are additional disclosure requirements for “robocalls funded by independent expenditures” requiring them to include a clause that states who funded the call. Such calls also trigger the requirement that the expenditure and a text of the call be reported to the city clerk within 48 hours of making it.

Williams believes the calls were required to comply with these provisions as well because the code requires it of “any person or committee that authorizes or makes an independent expenditure in any amount for a robocall.”

But it is not clear if these provisions actually apply because the Yes on C committee is not an “independent expenditure” committee, but rather is a “recipient committee.”

Either way, the claim that the call wasn’t made to support Measure C is absurd, Williams said. It was paid for by the Yes on C campaign and featured Combs, the council’s most avid rent control advocate, he said.

Terry Price, chairman of the Yes on C campaign, stressed that the campaign “didn’t violate the robocall ordinance,” citing the guidance by the city clerk. He reiterated that ?the call and the town hall involved an exchange of factual information. That, he said, is sufficient to sway voters.

“By presenting people factual information, they are inclined to vote in favor of Measure C,” Price said.

Price stressed that the whole thrust of the robocall ordinance was to prevent last-minute anonymous attacks like those suffered in 2012 by former Councilman Gary Wysocky, a Combs ally. Calls slamming Wysocky claimed they were funded by the “Anybody But Wysocky Committee,” but no such committee ever filed state or local paperwork, and those behind the calls have never been identified.

The notion that the recent robocall by Combs was trying to hide who was behind the efforts makes no sense because Combs is a vocal supporter of rent control, Price said. In addition, the Yes on C committee will soon be filing required campaign expenditures that will show the payments for the calls, Price said, further undercutting the notion that the campaign is not transparent.

Price has been a sharp critic of what he called the opposition’s “push polling” which he calls unethical and full of “complete lies and garbage.” Rob Muelrath, the campaign consultant for the No on C campaign, denies they’ve used such tactics, describing the calls as “voter education.”

Even though both camps are claiming to be educating voters with their efforts, Combs says there is still a glaring difference.

“Some of us recognize the difference between facts and alternative facts,” she said.

The different readings of the rules highlight a “gray area” in the law that might only get clarified if someone files a complaint and a judge rules on it, or if the code is updated, Gomez said.

The law was written to exclude some types of calls; for example, an automated call by the non-partisan League of Women Voters urging people to vote, Gomez said. Which is why the law turns on the content of the message, not the affiliation of the group.

“It’s not about who does it,” Gomez said. “It’s about the content of the information they are relaying.”