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There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Especially when it comes to local government and politics.
That’s the warning Shirley Grindle has been shouting to Orange County residents since she sat on a county planning commission in the 1970s.
It’s also what prompted her in 1978 to write and help pass one of the toughest campaign finance ordinances in the nation, known locally as Tincup.
Most OC politicians hate the ordinance with a passion and have complained about it consistently en masse since I showed up in 2004.
Yet this past year, Orange County’s Ethics Commission recognized the long term impact of Grindle’s work with a county resolution.
Grindle’s example, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer told me in an interview, “reminds citizens that if you’re dissatisfied with your government or a government agency…you have the ability to ring out issues and raise attention to them.”
To become a local watchdog like Grindle, here’s a quick guide to campaign finance disclosures.
[Read: Santana: How To Track Special Interest Influence In Your Public Backyard]
Spitzer said the key lesson for activists from Grindle is to know your topic, be accurate and look for solutions, not just gotchas.
That and a strong constitution.
“She’s salty. She’s a fighter. She’s a scrapper,” Spitzer said. “I appreciate that.”
“I just love her resolve,” he said, noting he started as an outsider in politics on a local school board and feels a kinship to Grindle. “She’s a true believer.”
“I can count on my hand the people I’ve come across, people that I respect and want to emulate,” Spitzer added. “Shirley is one of those people.”
At the county level, the initiative Grindle led – called Tincup (Time To Get Money Out of Politics) – imposed tight campaign contribution limits along with a gift ban, keeping freebies at the county government down to $10.
The gift ban limit used to be $5 but was recently updated with Grindle’s blessing.
The idea behind gift bans, Grindle argues, is that keeping freebies limited to a cup of coffee keeps public staff safe from improper influence as well as liberating vendors from having to pony up for freebies and influence.
After getting an ethics commission started a few years back with Spitzer’s help as a former county supervisor, Grindle, who just turned 90 this past Christmas Eve, is now on a mission to get every city in Orange County to eliminate freebies for city employees and the elected officials that oversee them.
She wants every city to adopt a gift ban.
“There’s no reason they should be getting gifts,” Grindle said, referring to local politicians and public officials.
“An active gift ban is the single most effective thing you can do to convince the public that you are not being bought and paid for,” she added.
Grindle has most recently advised Anaheim officials, who are mulling over their own version of a gift ban.
Yet she fears that the $50 freebie limit currently being proposed in Anaheim still allows lobbyists and special interests far too much room for influence peddling.
Anaheim made major headlines in recent years with an FBI probe surfacing that killed a stadium deal and put the resort district’s influence on city hall under a microscope.
“If there was ever a city that needs a gift ban,” Grindle told me, “it’s Anaheim.”
Training An Eye For Detail
“I’ve always been this way…all my life, Grindle told me, noting her attention to detail and evidence-based decision making.
Most importantly, she adds, “not afraid to be the lone vote.”
Grindle grew up in Long Beach and graduated in 1958 from UCLA as the only woman engineer in her class.
She later worked as an aerospace engineer as the technical director of the Hyperthermal Re-entry Simulation Plasma Arc Wind Tunnel test facility at both the Giannini Scientific Company in Santa Ana and Space General Corporation in El Monte.
She earned a reputation in her industry for her contribution to the development of nose-cone and leading-edge materials that could withstand re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere from outer space and return a man alive from space.
After retiring in 1971, after 15 years in the aerospace business, Grindle bought a home in the foothills of East Orange at the foot of the El Modena Hills.
A Passion for Watchdogging
When a local sand and gravel company sought a zone change of a nearby orange grove to allow for a pit-mining operation, Grindle started organizing the neighborhoods of East Orange, El Modena and North Tustin to oppose the expansion of mining operations in Santiago Creek.
In the midst of the controversy, OC Supervisor Ralph B Clark met Grindle and was impressed with her ability to garner public support to confront the sand and gravel industry.
In January 1973, Supervisor Clark appointed the new retiree as the second woman in county history to serve on the Orange County Planning Commission
That, Grindle notes, is where she learned everything she needed to know about local politics and government, watching influence peddling up close, noticing how incumbent county supervisors would draw campaign contributions from those with interests around the county planning counter.
“First of all, no one is assigned that responsibility by any ordinance or law,” Grindle said of public watchdogs, adding “a lot of times only citizens know” when it’s time to gear up to, “keep em honest.”
By 1978, Grindle led Orange County’s first countywide initiative, the Tin Cup Ordinance, to regulate the power of money in local politics.
“I remember when we qualified it for the ballot,” Grindle notes, recalling her message to local politicians.
“We have to do the job you guys should have done,” she said.
After her stint on the planning commission and adoption of the ordinance, Grindle said she shifted into a different gear.
“I felt an obligation to do this … .because I’m responsible for this ordinance,” she noted. “I’ve never been paid for any of this.”
A House of Cards
Grindlle’s house is full of thousands of index cards, with specific cards individually tracking campaign donors and recipients – an ongoing hand-written live database tracking lobbying networks across OC – all in her effort to keep an eye out for any undue influence peddling.
That kind of independent watchdogging has always attracted a mix of concern as well as fire from local politicians – who hate getting called out by Grindle.
Former District Attorney Tony Rackauckas’ chief of staff used to trade hard words with Grindle over her work. Especially when Grindle called out the DA for a lack of enforcement on local politicians, specifically calling out cases of campaign finance reporting issues with top officials like former OC Sheriff Mike Carona, even DA Rackauckas’ chief of staff herself.
Carona eventually attracted FBI attention, which focused a prosecution in part on issues raised by campaign contributions and ended up sending him to federal prison.
DA Rackauckas ended up losing re-election to Spitzer in 2018.
Grindle says her efforts are always aimed at compliance not prosecutions – an emphasis Spitzer seconded.
These days, Grindle says she mainly keeps an eye on the county as well as the cities of Anaheim and Orange with her index cards.
Orange City Council members were aiming to also hand Grindle a congratulatory resolution this month on the heels of the county ethic’s commission recognition.
Grindle refused.
“Four members of the Orange City Council, under the urging of Councilman Jon Dumitru, recently voted to weaken the Orange Campaign Ordinance,” she told me.
“This action opened a recognizable loophole whereby illegal campaign funds could be diverted to them through other candidate’s campaign funds. Because of this dishonorable and unwarranted weakening of the ordinance, I do not wish to be honored by the four councilmembers who betrayed the public by this self-serving action.”
[Read: More Orange County Cities Overhaul Campaign Finance Rules]
Keeping contribution limits low and forcing politicians to gather lots of small contributions translates directly into more independent leaders with broad support, Grindle notes.
A few years back, Grindle sought to institutionalize her efforts by getting county supervisors to set up an independent ethics commission to watch over county campaign contributions.
While far from perfect (the panel lacks subpoena power and doesn’t call out elected leaders publicly), Grindle is proud of the panel and the work of Executive Director Dena Hoard.
But she also worries about a future county without a citizen watchdog like her.
“All hell will break loose,” she said, “when they realize no one is watching.”
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