At the June 23 Cypress City Council meeting, Mayor David Burke proposed to provide a presentation at the August 25 meeting on his campaign finance reform options as well as laws that might improve transparency around election spending in Cypress. I believe that most Cypress residents including myself want our city council to focus on issues that impact our daily lives such as city infrastructure, safety, low sales tax and no additional taxes, business outreach, and city financial oversight.
There is a strong likelihood that campaign finance reform wouldn’t be on the city council agenda if not requested by Mayor Burke since he is the founder and President of a 501(c)(4) political non-profit organization which primarily focusses on getting cities to implement his campaign finance reform options. It’s unknown whether Mayor Burke receives a salary from the nonprofit. He was asked at his recent townhall meeting to disclose his organization donors which would provide transparency to Cypress residents.
In 2022, the same year he ran for Cypress City Council, his nonprofit published the campaign finance grades for the County of Orange in which the city of Cypress received a failing grade.
Cypress’s city council candidates must follow state campaign finance requirements including an additional city mandated reporting requirement for campaign in-kind services of $100 or more which was approved in August 1998. The most recent Orange County city that considered implementing campaign finance reform was Stanton, which received a failing grade in Mayor Burke’s report.
I reviewed several articles in the Voice of OC that identified the type of reform they were looking to implement: 1) limit individual contributions to a political candidate to $1,000, 2) limit fundraising windows to 11 months before an election and 3) require officials to recuse themselves from votes that impact a campaign donor for a year after receiving their contribution.
The Voice of OC also stated that Mayor Burke helped craft the Stanton ordinance and spoke at city council meetings. Stanton’s campaign finance reform ordinance was rescinded in December of 2024 after new council members were seated in Stanton. Mayor David Shawver said “It’s contradictory to state law, and also it opens this up to litigation. This city gets sued too much already.” Most recently the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case, National Republican Senatorial Committee vs Federal Election Commission which addresses whether the limits of party coordinated expenditures violate the First Amendment.
In 2010 the Supreme Court’s ruled in the case, Citizen’s United vs the Federal Election Commission, that the contribution limit wouldn’t apply to independent expenditures.
As a proud Cypress resident, I have written several letters to the editor identifying the outstanding administrative work accomplished by decades of city council members and city staff. These amazing city council members have been elected under the California and municipal campaign finance requirements. Why make changes when our city is financially sound and is doing well under current election laws? There is no empirical data correlating a city’s financial success to the implementation of candidate finance rules. Cypress would be better served if our city council focused its efforts on the areas that have made it a great city to live, work, and visit.
Pearl Bolelter
Cypress