For some people in Orange County politics and government, a call from Shirley Grindle would give them the chills. She is a so-called watch-dog.
Rumored to have 3×5 index cards tracking every donor and candidate running for county office and mayor/city council in several major cities, Grindle makes it a practice of calling candidates and their treasurers on minor violations and omissions on campaign filings.
To the rest of us, she mostly is just a nuisance having authored the ordinance that restricts contributions to county office seekers to $1600 per family (which should be thrown out by a court) and limiting transfers of funds into OC candidates’ political accounts from other committees, among other things.
But if she were to get her way on her latest proposal–to create a NEW county ethics commission, it would cost upward of $200,000 and such a bureaucracy would certainly grow in purview and cost.
Her original proposal would have had the new commission looking into just about everything. After being rebuffed she is now proposing just to oversee campaign finance. She says she wants to ‘educate candidates and campaign treasurers’.
Here is my suggestion: Shirley Grindle should do a seminar or sell an instructional DVD or teach a class at her local community college about ethics. But legitimizing the weird and anti-social behavior of thumbing through campaign finance statements by making it a function of a county commission is not the right approach.