Editor’s note: This article was updated to correct a statement made during the meeting and to clarify the mayor’s husband occupation. Last updated April 17 at 1:32 p.m. Lea este articulo en español aquí.
The Hollister City Council took initial steps to repeal its campaign contributions and reporting ordinance at its April 15 meeting.
The city’s current ordinance requires that all campaign donations greater than $1 be reported and sets a contribution limit of $250 per individual or entity to each candidate.
Councilmember Rolan Resendiz opposed voiding the ordinance, citing fairness and transparency. The rest of the council agreed that future candidates for City Council may benefit from following the state’s campaign contribution law.
If the council repeals the reporting ordinance, the city would default to AB 571, which sets a limit of $5,500 per contributor for each candidate and requirement to disclose donors who give more than $99. The council will have to bring the motion to repeal back for a first and second reading at a later date.
City Clerk Jennifer Woodworth told BenitoLink that the first reading would occur in May.
Resendiz said he was on the council that voted to approve the reportable $1 in contributions in the name of transparency in June 2021. According to meeting minutes, Councilmembers Rick Perez, Tim Burns, Resendiz and Ignacio Velazquez approved the resolution.
In 2022, the council failed to approve a motion to repeal the requirement that candidates report contributions over $1.
“We decided to adopt the policy that if you get $1 from anybody, then everybody in the city of Holllister knows who is contributing to your campaign,” Resendiz said. “I think it’s a fair policy.
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Councilmember Rolan Resendiz said the current contributions ordinance was about fairness and transparency. Photo by Monserrat Solis.“Basically, it’s to level the playing field so that people like myself—a teacher, who is self-funding his campaigns—can run for office as opposed to somebody who’s funded by developers or whose husband works for the industry of development,” he said.
On this occasion Resendiz did not say whose husband works in development, but during the April 2 City Council meeting he said that Mayor Mia Casey’s husband worked with developers for 18 years.
Casey replied to Resendiz that her husband works in senior services in San Francisco and does not work for Eden Housing, which has a the project that the council was considering approving on April 2.
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Mayor Mia Casey said the current $1 reportable policy could turn into a witch hunt. Photo by Monserrat Solis.Casey told BenitoLink her husband, Jon Casey, is a financial person that works for a company that manages care facilities for seniors.
Jon Casey is the chief financial officer for Heritage on the Marina, a non-profit retirement community, Mia Casey told BenitoLink. According to his LinkedIn account, prior to that, Jon was the vice president of finance of Covia/Front Porch, a nonprofit that provides services for seniors, for about 16 years.
Perez, meanwhile, disagreed with Resendiz, saying that granting a higher reportable dollar amount for campaign donations is fair.
“So, if you’re a small businessman, compared to someone that has a lot of money, I have to go out there and spend the time to go out there and get $99 checks,” he said. “Personally, I think this whole thing should be thrown away. I think there’s too much interference in trying to make it hard for people to run and one of them is all the extra paperwork.”
Casey said there were concerns raised when the ordinance was first discussed, especially the $1 donor disclosure policy, that it could turn into a witch hunt.
“I’ve seen a little bit of that this year,” she said.
There was no public comment.
Campaign finance disclosures for the Hollister City Council can be found here.
Other council business
The council unanimously approved the purchase of a sanitary sewer camera truck that will allow city staff to inspect the city’s sewer system to locate issues including clogs and collapsed pipes, a city report said.
According to the report, city staff identified various needs including: a crawler that can inspect 4-inch to 48-inch pipes; a high definition camera system; a crane to lower and raise crawlers; and a manhole lifting system.
The council’s approval allows the city to initiate bidding through SourceWell Cooperative Purchasing Agency.
To make the purchase, the city will transfer $400,000 from the city’s sewer enterprise fund to the sewer machinery and equipment fund to cover the cost of the new camera system, the report states.
The council unanimously agreed to include an affordable housing ordinance, also known as inclusionary housing, to the agenda at a later date.
The ordinance would allow local preference for affordable housing as a tool to prioritize affordable housing applicants, displacement, housing insecurity and address historical racial injustices, City Attorney Mary F. Lerner said.
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