San Diego unions give thousands of dollars to IID Director

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A former political candidate said that in political elections forms matter. Forms like Form 460 on which candidates disclose contributions.

Former IID Board Director Candidate Ed Snively explained, “Form 460, which each candidate is required to fill out detailing expenditures and income for their campaign.”

He pointed out that Form 496 is especially important because it discloses indirect contributions – in the thousands. And very few voters may not about this form.

Debbie Porter, with the I.C. Registrar of Voters Office, said this information is open to the public.

“We also have a form, form 496. And if a candidate is receiving a thousand dollars or more from a contributor, they have twenty-four hours to file that form with us,” Porter said.

A candidate in the recent IID Board Director election got nearly $44,000 dollars through this form, funds unknown to some voters, since they were not disclosed on the Form 460.

“We don’t have a lot of requests for a 496. And we’ve just discovered that maybe we should just say, all of the forms attributed to the election,” Porter said.

“But you have to know about it to ask for it. That’s really the key. And it was one of those that apparently no one knew about,” Snively said.

KSWT looked at the form of the candidate who won the IID Board Director race. In the document Form 496, it identified several San Diego-based unions giving thousands of dollars to the candidate. In the original candidate’s packet that the Registrar of Voters gave us Form 496 was not in it. We had to ask for it specifically. But, we only knew that Form 496 existed because we had been alerted to it by an anonymous source.

“what the voters need to understand and want is transparency from all of the candidates in any race on where the funds come from,” Snively said.

County officials told us that from now on Form 496 will be included as part of a candidate’s regular disclosure packet. This way, it’ll be given to the public whether they ask for it specifically or not.

Correction on the video: Debbie Porter works for the I.C. Registrar of Voters Office.