Pam Keller Responds! But Will We Get to See The Fullerton Collaborative’s Donation Records?
Yesterday on our blog, our own intrepid Travis Kiger requested that Fullerton City Council member Pam Keller reveal the names of the parties that have made donations to the Fullerton Collaborative since she first became a candidate in 2006. He also sent the request personally to Ms. Keller who kindly responded.
Here’s the correspondence. First, the request by Travis:
I believe that you are a good person, but I am not able to explain some of your recent council votes. As you probably know, one of our bloggers has been researching your compensation arrangement with the Fullerton Collaborative. For reasons explained on today’s blog post, we are requesting full disclosure of all donations to the Fullerton Collaborative.
We will not back down from this request. I strongly believe that transparency is in the best interests of the public.
Furthermore, if there are any corrections that you feel need to be made to facts posted on our site, please let me know. This is an important discussion to engage in. If you remain silent on this issue, we can only make the assumption that something is wrong and we will amplify our call.
Thank you,
Travis Kiger
Friends for Fullerton’s Future
And Pam Keller’s response:
Good Afternoon Travis,
This is getting more and more interesting
Yes, it is. What started out as a look into the doings of the Fullerton Collaborative has blossomed into something else – issues that go to a council member’s voting record and credibility.
Since we may not have anything to report out on for a while, I will do a recap tomorrow on what we know so far about Pam, her Collaborative, and who has donated to it.
Bottom line is I hope all is on the up and up. Pam and her board have chosen to create this issue by having her run for office. She could go back to teaching and this is a non issue. She wants to find the edge of the line and walk it, she needs to be TOTALLY transparent.
ANother issue is her financial disclosures. All elected officials must disclose the source of their income. Sounds like Pam may be calling FSD her employer when in reality it is the dues paying members (some of whom are city departments?).
I can see how it would require a board meeting to release a list of donors, but what about all of the other questions that remain unanswered? Certainly it doesn’t take a board meeting to explain why her money goes through the school district or to tell us who is auditing all of these intertwined relationships.
I don’t know the history behind this request, but why don’t you just pull Pam’s annual disclosure filings? All sources of “income” must be disclosed. Any large transactions that her company or organization is involved in must be disclosed. This is a requirement of all elected and appointed officials.
No company or organization is ever required to publicly report donations, that is the responsibility of the official or a campaign committee. Are you suggesting any and all donors do some sort of reporting beyond what the campaigns do?
If your trying to disqualify her from a vote, the rules are pretty clear that nobody can accept gifts or money leading up to an action or in payment for a vote. Pretty simple concept…
If you are challenging her official filings, which you have a right to do, protest to the FPPC and try to initiate an inquiry. Don’t you think this is what they do?…just…asking?
#5
Isn’t the issue really the fact that Pam may not ever touch the money directly, therefore, she does not have to list it in her campaign filing?
The situation seems to be Pam claims to work for the School District, the collaborative accepts donations for their events, dues etc. but these donations are not to her employer or her. This would be a great way to launder stuff. Doesn’t mean Pam is doing this but the questions are legit.
Is the collaborative a 501 c 3 organization, or is it simply an offshoot of the Fullerton School District?
If it’s a 501 c3, shouldn’t the list of donors (as well as any grants received) be public record? Maybe an accountant can help me out here.
The only thing that is unseemly is Keller’s hitting up developers for contributions to The Collaborative. “I don’t take donations from developers but you ca make one to the Collaborative” is in fact supporting her place of work.
It would be interesting to see whether or not any of the developers gave to the collaborative, and in return Keller gave a greenlight to their projects.
But even so, if she can justify her vote on points based on the merits of the project, while it might be unseemly, it might not be illegal. Just politics as usual.
If so, she makes a fine local Nancy Pelosi and Ted Stephens.
#7, The Collaborative is a 501(c)(3) but it “contracts” with FSD for pam Keller’s services as an executive director. This is actually “reverse contracting out” and I am doing a post on this tomorrow.
I believe the donations only need to be pubic if they surpass a certain percentage. If there are any of those they should be divulged immediately.
As Harpoon has correctly stated, nobody is accusing anyone of an illegal act.
#7, nobody is claiming that Keller broke the law. Instead the issue revolves around her own pledges not to take money from developers and to let the people “drive” development – not special interests. She has voted on two really horrendous projects that seem to fly directly in the face of her promises and squeaky clean veneer.
It seems clear that she went on that boat ride with Steve Sheldon. Did Shledon contribute to the Collaborative? The Pelican boys were on that boat too. Did she solicit donations from them? She voted for both of their monster projects.
We just want to find out.
I love what you guys are doing, are you accepting donations for this blog, or do you need to run it by Pam?
Stan #10:
We hear Norby is accepting donations, particularly if you work for the County of Orange or if you think no qualifications at all make a person ideal for a job. You can call and donate to him without Pam’s permission.
“transparency is in the best interests of the public.” fullerton shadow, please don’t think I’m criticizing your writing when I say only windows are transparent, people are honest. Honest city council members is in the best interests of the public. the facts shown in FFFF about keller allows the public to see through her motives. If the public has the wrong impression about her, then it is on Keller to be honest and reveal all the donations made to her nebulous fullerton collaborative
I’m still smelling those Chicago Style Politics, smoky back room Developer’s greenback infused siutcase deals? Am I the only one getting a whiff of that? Maybe we are just dancing around the bottom line here because no one wants to call it what it truly is? Those deals are pretty tough to prove however I think as they say in Chicago, “where there is smoke in the back room, there is someone getting the greenback handoff”, no not the pigskin handoff, thats in football… Maybe our fine City Manager could help us out on that smoky back room, good ol boy/silly girl, scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours schooling? Ya think???