California Democratic Party Needs Structure for Financial Transparency and Accountability

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Ralph Miller
Executive Director of Latinos for America

The California Party is at a crossroads. It can either turn the way of clean money and electoral reform, embracing transparency and accountability in its own finances, or it can continue along the way of past “politics as usual” financing of elections and running the party, where kingmakers are common and the grassroots lick envelopes.

In this last election cycle, we saw, and helped finance, the California Democratic Party raise and spend tens of millions of dollars, nearly $30M of which was spend mostly for television advertising in the LA basin supporting the failed candidacy of Phil Angelides for Governor, when countless voter development efforts were left gasping by the wayside.

The Marin-DFA Democratic Club has sponsored the Financial Transparency and Accountability Resolution calling for the creation of an independent Audit Committee within the California Democratic Party to help further align party policy with operations.

An audit committee is an operating committee whose members are independent of the management of the organization and/or drawn from outside directors. Audit committees are formed to assist the management of an organization by providing an independent review of the effectiveness of the organization’s financial reporting process and internal control system(s). Responsibilities of an audit committee typically include:
o Overseeing the financial reporting process.
o Monitoring choice of accounting policies and principles.
o Monitoring internal control process.
o Overseeing hiring and performance of the external auditors.