New rules that could reveal the campaign managers and consultants behind Stockton political campaigns should be mandatory, members of the City Council’s legislation committee agreed.
At City Hall Monday, the Legislation/Environmental Committee discussed creating a registry of campaign managers and political consultants that would be posted publicly on the city’s website.
Led by District 4 Councilmember Mario Enriquez, the legislation committee is responsible for drafting new rules and local laws before they head to a full City Council vote.
Vice Mayor and District 6 Councilmember Jason Lee and District 1 Councilmember Michele Padilla are also on the committee, though Padilla was absent Monday. District 3 Councilmember Michael Blower attended in her place.
In addition to requiring consultants to reveal themselves and their client lists, the new rules would require them to attend city orientations covering local and state political ethics laws and appropriate conduct for elected officials.
“We do wanna add some teeth,” Enriquez said Monday. “I can’t see why consultants who want to work and support candidates for the city of Stockton, why you can’t be part of a registry.”
Why did the grand jury recommend more transparency about consultants?
Monday’s discussion came roughly a month after the San Joaquin County Civil Grand Jury highlighted Stockton’s failure to respond adequately to recommendations it made following multiple investigations over the past two years.
One of those recommendations was a local transparency law for political consultants.
The recommendation was part of the civil grand jury’s 2023-2024 investigation, during which the jury said it received multiple complaints from city employees that “a threatening work environment has been created by the ongoing bullying and intimidation from individuals connected to” 209 Times.
209 Times is a social media page run by political consultant Motecuzoma Sanchez, who also leads Stockton’s Salary Setting Commission, which is responsible for advising the City Council on how much it should pay councilmembers.
209 Times allegedly intimidated city employees through relentless emails, messages, phone calls and comments during public meetings, in addition to online posts, the civil grand jury said. Sanchez has dismissed the investigation as “not legitimate.”
The civil grand jury recommended that councilmembers stop associating with people linked to 209 Times.
A ‘layer of transparency’
A draft of the proposed consultant rules published with the legislation committee’s agenda Thursday initially showed the registry would be “voluntary.”
But at City Hall on Monday, the committee agreed that disclosure by consultants should be mandatory.
“We talk about how important it is to have transparency,” Blower said. “To put something in place like this, I think adds that layer of transparency.”
Lee stressed that the rules wouldn’t be aimed at a particular consultant or group, and that parties contacting officials about particular issues isn’t unusual.
“Oftentimes when people say, this person’s with the 209 Times, this person’s with the developers, or this person’s with that — everybody has somebody who’s talking to them about something,” he said.
But Lee ultimately voiced support for mandatory rules, arguing they could reveal when officials over-relied on others to make decisions.
“The problem that I always have is when people get up here, and they’re not the ones thinking for themselves, and it’s other people pulling strings,” Lee said.
The proposed rules don’t single out a particular person or group, the draft shows.
Instead, they would apply generally to political consultants — defined as “any individual or firm providing consulting services advising or assisting political campaigns,” and to campaign managers, defined as “any professional working to coordinate the daily operations, budget, and strategy of a political campaign.”
Reviving the rules
The legislation committee didn’t always support new transparency rules for political consultants, despite the civil grand jury’s advice.
In the months following the civil grand jury’s 2023-2024 investigation, a similar proposal effectively died in the committee, whose members cited financial constraints to implementing it, a report linked to Monday’s agenda said.
District 3 Councilmember Michael Blower led the committee at the time, and then-Councilmembers Susan Lenz and Kimberly Warmsley, who represented Districts 4 and 6, were members.
State law requires candidates to disclose what they spend campaign money on, and that includes consultants. In 2024, Blower argued that candidates and consultants already breaking state law were unlikely to follow new city rules.
The District 3 representative argued the council should still adopt its own rules.
“You’re always going to have people that, if they don’t follow the rules, they’re probably not going to follow these rules,” he said. “But, I think having those rules in place to have yet another thing that they don’t follow, there’s some value there as well.”
The councilmember didn’t immediately respond to a question about why he changed his view.
What’s next
The legislation committee didn’t pass a final version of the rules Monday, instead directing City Clerk Katherine Roland to do more research on what the policy could look like.
The clerk plans to research whether consultants should have to file quarterly updates on their activities, and whether candidates should confirm who their consultants are, she said.
Roland also plans to research whether Stockton could form an ethics commission that would combine aspects of San Francisco’s and Sacramento’s ethics bodies, she said.