City Councilman could be off hook for missing $10,000 party donation
Santa Monica City Councilman Mike Feinstein may finally be off the hook for a $10,000 donation to the Green Party of Los Angeles County he deposited into a personal bank account more than three years ago.
Local Green Party leaders on Sunday voted 7-4 to drop a small claims lawsuit against Feinstein seeking to recover $5,000, the maximum allowed. They said they hope to resolve the matter through mediation.
But Feinstein himself cast one of the votes to drop the lawsuit, prompting harsh criticisms from some of his Green Party colleagues.
“Feinstein did not recuse himself. He did not leave the room,” said Joe Crompton, who sits on the County Council of the Green Party of LA County with Feinstein and nine others. “It’s a clear conflict of interest that Mike voted on something to which he personally has a financial stake.”
State law prohibits elected officials from voting on government matters that directly affect their finances. Though the Green Party donation is not a government matter, those who voted against dropping the lawsuit said Feinstein’s participation lacked integrity and violated the spirit of the law.
What will happen next is unclear. Green Party members disagree over whether a two-thirds majority is required to formally withdraw from the lawsuit, an issue that ultimately may be forced to a vote. But with the next meeting of the local Green Party scheduled after the April 7 date for the small claims hearing, it’s uncertain whether the case will be put off or heard.
Feinstein didn’t return calls seeking comment. He has maintained in the past he spent the money on Green Party business, but hasn’t produced bank records or accounted for how the money was spent.
That refusal prompted officials from the Green Party of California to urge Feinstein last year to step out of Green Party business until the matter was resolved, a request Feinstein apparently ignored. It also sparked a criminal investigation that ended when prosecutors decided not to press charges.
Green Party officials described the small claims lawsuit as a last-ditch effort to recover the money when they launched it last year. They said Feinstein was owed some of the $10,000 for rent on a Pico Boulevard office the party used. But the party estimated that Feinstein still owed it a balance of more than $6,000.
Voting to drop the lawsuit Sunday was Feinstein, along with County Council members Sara Amir, Jeffrey Drummond, Tera Little, Genevieve Marcus, Nancy Pearlman and Denise Robb. Santa Monica City Councilman Kevin McKeown, along with Crompton, and County Council members Coby Skye and Gabrielle Weeks voted against dropping the lawsuit at the meeting of the Green Party of LA County, held in the Gay & Lesbian Center of Greater Long Beach.
Discord over the $10,000 check has drawn deep divisions in the cash-strapped local Green Party. It prompted the donor of the $10,000 check, Bill Pietz, to resign from the party out of frustration over how the matter was handled by people on both sides of the dispute. Pietz has said he thinks Feinstein acted wrongly by taking the money, but added that, in his opinion, it wasn’t a criminal error.
State and local Green Party officials have tried unsuccessfully for years to use mediation to mend the rift. The issue repeatedly centered on documents that show how the money was spent. Green Party officials, who regularly report their finances to the Fair Political Practices Commission, a government group that enforces campaign laws, said Feinstein must hand over bank records.
Pearlman said she’s optimistic Feinstein will work towards resolving the dispute internally once the lawsuit is dropped.
“There are bills on both sides and we just have to figure it out,” Pearlman said. “It’s not all clear cut and it’s not all so easily handled... I’m optimistic that it can be resolved through mediation, with the legal issues out of the way.”
Asked if she thought Feinstein’s vote in the matter constituted a conflict of interest, Pearlman said, “It obviously affects him in other ways, but it affects all of us... so I don’t view it as a conflict of interest.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 18, 2004. Read the original PDF.