APPENDIX 6
CITY OF SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO
INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM
DATE: July 25, 2019
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Council
FROM: Jason Rosenberg, City Attorney
SUBJECT: Donations to the City of South San Francisco
This memo addresses whether any potential conflict of interest may exist for individual Councilmembers when donations are made to the City to be used to underwrite the cost of a City sponsored event or City facility.
The conflict-of-interest laws generally apply when a gift in the form of a donation is made to a particular councilmember. However, where such a donation is made to the public agency rather than to the public official, it does not qualify as a gift under the conflict of interest laws pursuant to California Code of Regulation Section 18944. Thus, under the limited circumstances of a gift to the public agency and provided that such gift is made consistent with the provisions of Section 18944, the gift does not create a conflict of interest should the donor of the gift be an individual or business that may at some point in the future have an item before the City Council for consideration.
Specifically, Regulation 18944 provides that a payment shall be deemed a gift to the public agency and not a gift to the public official if all of the following requirements are met:
(1) The payment is used for official agency business.
(2) The agency head controls use of the payment.
(3) The agency reports the payment on FPPC Form 801 (Payment to Agency Report) that is maintained as a public record and includes the following information:
(a) A description of the payment, the date it was received, the intended purpose and the amount of the payment or the actual or estimated fair market value of the goods or services provided, if the amount is unknown.
(b) The name and address of the individual donor. If the donor is an entity, the report must also describe the business activity, or the nature and interests of the entity. If the donor has raised funds from another person for the specific purpose of making the payment to the agency, the report must contain the name of each person and the amount given by each person.
(c) The use of the payment, and the name, title, and department of the agency official who used the payment.
(d) The signature of the agency head.
(e) For any quarter when payments aggregate to $2,500.00 or more since the last filing, the local agency must submit a copy of the form(s) or a detailed summary of the information on the form to the filing officer who receives the agency employees' statements of economic interests, within 30 days after the close of the quarter. The filing officer shall post a copy of the form or the information in the form on its website, in a prominent fashion within 30 days after the close of any quarter in which the agency receives payments aggregating to $2,500.00 or more since the last filing.