Last week, the Bohemian published a story about a political action committee called Votesane, and the $35,500 it sent to Napa Rep. Mike Thompson’s 2016 re-election campaign.

The PAC, advertised as an online portal where so-called conduit contributions are collected and forwarded to candidates, jumped out because of the fact that the aggregate $35,500 that went to Thompson was all traced back to the real estate industry, via filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Let’s get under the hood of the conduit PAC phenomenon a little deeper, now that the Bohemian has heard from Votesane’s founder Rob Zimmer and the FEC after publication.

Under the law that created the conduit PAC, the donors who give through the PAC are subject to campaign-contribution limits, but the PAC itself is not. The conduit PAC, in its most benign form, exists to process a credit card on behalf of a contributor and forward the cash to the candidate, minus a small fee.

Under FEC rules, the board of any conduit PAC is not allowed to decide who gets a contribution; nor can the board send a contribution to a candidate other than the recipient earmarked by the donor.

If a conduit PAC was found to be endorsing a candidate or steering donations to one or another candidate, it would be subject to the same rules as any other advocacy PAC, including the most important of all: there would be annual limits on how much the PAC could donate to a particular candidate.

That’s how it is with such organizations as the National Association of Realtors, which also regularly contributes to Thompson. Under existing law, Votesane can funnel as much aggregated real estate money to Thompson as its donors see fit to contribute.

That’s the legal landscape. But what of the ethical one? Zimmer and the FEC both compared Votesane to another conduit PAC called ActBlue. But the big difference there is that it’s pretty obvious what ActBlue’s purpose is: to funnel contributions from donors to Democratic Party candidates. The ActBlue board doesn’t endorse, they don’t
pick the candidates who’ll get contributions—they just send the money.

There’s no language in the conduit PAC rule that addresses the business ethics of these newcomer PACs on the post–Citizens United American election scene.

It doesn’t address, for example, the phenomenon of a conduit PAC set up as an “anyone can give” site but which, within a year of its formation, is seeing business only from one industry—and whose founder comes out of that same industry.

Zimmer says that he has tried to drum up other business at Votesane from big labor and other industries, but has been unable to do so. He blames the absence of any non–real estate industry contributions after 2010 on an older citizenry who are still used to writing checks to candidates and who aren’t going online to participate in democracy.

“It’s fair to say that the realtor community has found it to be an efficient form of giving,” Zimmer says, adding, “I’m glad it happened. The first big customer is always the hardest.”

As it stands, the only rule for customers seeking out a conduit PAC is caveat emptor.

And why should a buyer beware? Well, let’s take an extreme hypothetical case. A white supremacist sets up a conduit PAC called the One Love PAC. It’s advertised as open to everyone, but soon after the PAC gets off the ground, everyone donating through the site just happens to also be a white supremacist.

Let’s say you stumble across a positive news story about One Love that calls it a bipartisan clearinghouse for anyone who wants to participate in the political process. The website says the same thing. Most of the money is going to Donald Trump, but you’d have to check the group’s FEC filings to know that.

So you sign up and send $500 to Nancy Pelosi—and now Pelosi just accepted $500 from an organization with ties to white supremacists.

This is an issue perhaps best addressed by best-practices business law, consumer law or even the Virginia Better Business Bureau, where Votesane is located. At the federal level, Congress would have to amend the law that created the conduit PACs in order to deal with the phenomenon of a conduit PAC whose founder comes out of the same industry as all of its donors.

Zimmer was forthcoming about the difficulties in getting a start-up off the ground and insisted that the board is operating on the up-and-up. “Success is not ordained,” he says.

Still, it’s a fair question to ask whether Votesane, and by extension, its advisory board, is the functional equivalent of a lobbyist, since every contribution that comes through the PAC is from the same industry (and Zimmer’s not the only one on the board with a background in real estate).

Speaking generally, the FEC’s deputy press officer Christian Hilland had this to say on the subject of Votesane and the aggregated contribution to real-estate-friendly Thompson:
“We are unable to comment on
any particular committee’s financial activity for the potential for enforcement matters to come before the Commission.”

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the landmark Domestic Worker Bill of Rights into law in 2014, but there was some fine print: the law extended overtime benefits to a class of workers previously left out of wage-equity efforts, yet the rights will expire on Jan. 1, 2017, subject to renewal or rejection by the Legislature.

The many-thousands-strong state domestic-worker workforce is dominated by immigrant labor, much of it historically of the low-pay and often undocumented variety. The new bill was a great deal for those workers; it was always easy to rip off or underpay domestic workers, some of whom would just as soon stay in the shadows and not rock the immigration boat than fight with a chintzy employer over just compensation.

As the Jan. 1 sunset date looms, revisiting the 2014 law raises another question about a class of workers left out of the final language enacted by the Legislature and signed by Brown. Overtime reform is one thing, but how about worker protections for those who don’t work a whole lot of hours, the visible and casual workforce that does all kinds of work around the yard, grass cutters and yard-maintenance crews out in force as the fullness of spring unfurls?

As legislators considered the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in 2014, the first versions of the bill contained another reform directed at those casual workers, way down at the bottom of the text. The reform was designed to close a gap in workers’ compensation coverage for low-hour laborers, but it never made it out of committee.

The proposed language would have eliminated a section of state labor code, enforced under the aegis of the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal-OSHA) that says short-term, casual employees are only eligible for workers’ compensation benefits after working a minimum of 52 hours over 90 days (workers have to make at least $100 in that time).

Casual workers and day laborers who fall below the line are not considered “employees” under state labor code. Under California insurance law, a homeowner’s insurance package has to include workers’ compensation protections for workers at the home who are deemed to be employees under state law.

The implications are obvious. If a casual worker who is not considered an “employee” under state law is injured on the job, the homeowner could be sued for whatever medical or other expenses ensue—even if such lawsuits are rare.

“The laws don’t match the daily phenomenon that has gone on for the past 20 years,” says Jesús Guzmán, lead organizer at the Graton Day Labor Center. The past two decades have seen the advent of a visible day-laborer economy dominated by immigrants, and the establishment of places such as Graton.

The day laborer workforce has expanded, but the coverage gap still exists, and Guzmán says the liability almost always falls on the worker’s shoulders. He shares the story of an area day laborer who fell off a ladder and sued the homeowner, but because he hadn’t reached the 52 hour threshold, the homeowner’s insurance didn’t cover the injury, “so the worker carried the full brunt of the injury and couldn’t work for two months.”

The original language in the Domestic Bill of Rights eliminated the 52-hour rule, and thus closed the gap in coverage that leaves workers unprotected and homeowners potentially on the hook for medical bills. “Almost all of the risk and liability falls on the worker,” Guzmán says. There’s no indication that legislators will try and reinstate that language in a re-upped version of the bill.

The bottom line for homeowners? All the law firms that specialize in this kind of litigation say the same thing: As you tool around the home and garden, making the to-do list and looking for laborers, always work with a licensed contractor when one is required, and make sure that your homeowner’s insurance is up to date.

Guzmán says the Graton center will tell homeowners who call in looking for a worker that “if someone is injured, they are responsible for them. We make it clear that they are responsible for the worker. Homeowners can ask their agent about their coverage, but we don’t tell them that the insurance is covering them. It’s a challenge for us, because it exposes workers to a system where they are really vulnerable and they are the ones with the most to lose when they are injured.”

For its part, the Graton shape-up center goes the extra mile to keep its workers safe, Guzmán says. Before anyone goes on a job, “we communicate and do intensive training around health and worker safety,” he says.