Time to clear the candidate seeking to be the first Black woman Mayor of Sacramento | Opinion

An investigator hired by Sacramento’s Ethics Commission has found that mayoral candidate Flojaune Cofer technically violated a city code by raising too much money by June, but that no punishment is warranted. That makes sense. The commission should accept the recommendation of its investigator when it meets on Oct. 23 and clear Cofer to continue her campaign for Mayor of Sacramento.

The relevant city codes and their election calendars are a conflicting mess right now. The City Council should update its codes if the intent is to limit big fundraising until 12 months before the actual election.

Cofer faced a complaint by local public affairs executive Steven Maviglio, who went overboard by demanding that she withdraw from the mayor’s race. City codes clearly state that in an “off-election year,” mayoral candidates are limited to receiving $67,900. The problem is that the city codes were written for when city elections were in June. But with California’s primary election moved up to March 5, 2024, Cofer was raising money a year ahead of when the election would actually be. But the outdated city codes still considered January through June of this year to be “off-election” time when money shouldn’t be raised.

Cofer reported receiving $158,738 in the first six months of this year. Steven D. Miller, the independent evaluator hired by the ethics commission says that is a violation. However, “given Respondent’s good faith efforts to comply with a confusing Municipal Code scheme, we suggest that any enforcement action would be inequitable.”

Based on our understanding of the calendar, one would think that the “off-election year” prior to a March election would have ended this past March. If that had been the case, Cofer’s fund-raising would have been just fine. A year, after all, is a year.

It turns out that in all previous city elections over the past decade, the off-election year did end 12 months before the actual election. Why not this time? The City Council forgot to amend the deadline in the code.

“Deputy City Attorney Ruyak told us he thought it was an oversight that the City had not changed the definition of the “off-election year” period...” Miller wrote in his evaluation.

And then there is the matter of the official city “primary election period,” to limit individual campaign contributions. For this election, Sacramento’s primary election period ran from April 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024.

Confused? So was the Cofer campaign last spring. “Respondent’s campaign treasurer, Chelsea Johnson, sent multiple, increasingly frustrated emails to the City Clerk’s office between April 13, 2023, and July 8, 2023, seeking guidance...,” Miller wrote in his report. She didn’t get that guidance.

The real lesson of this ordeal is for Sacramento to always have clear and understandable rules and timetables for candidates seeking local office. None of this suggests that Cofer should leave the race. It’s only getting started.