Opinion ID: 2445720
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Petitioners' Complaint to OCF and the Board

Text: Petitioners are registered District of Columbia voters who reside in Ward 2. On August 28, 2008, they filed a complaint with OCF charging that Jack Evans, the incumbent Councilmember from Ward 2, had violated the District's campaign finance law by using government resources in his re-election campaign. Specifically, petitioners alleged, Evans had improperly used his own Council office to take photographs of himself with [Metropolitan Police Department] Police Chief Cathy Lanier while she was on duty and in official uniform, and had used one of those photographs in a campaign advertisement published in The Current, a widely distributed local weekly newspaper, on August 13, 2008. This full-page ad urging readers to vote for Evans in the upcoming September 9 primary election featured a color photo of Chief Lanier standing arm-in-arm with Evans under the headline Working Together for Ward 2. Petitioners complained that the ad implied a clear endorsement of Evans by Chief Lanier. Petitioners further alleged that the Evans campaign also had displayed the photograph of Evans and Chief Lanier on its website, but had removed it soon after [petitioners] publicly protested the newspaper ad. And, according to the complaint, the advertisement had attracted unfavorable attention from other quarters as well: [F]rom what we have read in the press, petitioners stated, we believe Chief Lanier apparently did not know in advance that Mr. Evans would use her photograph with him in a campaign ad. Further, petitioners reported, the police union expressed concerns in the press that the photo made it appear that not only Lanier endorsed Evans, but that perhaps the entire departmentas personified by the Chiefalso endorsed him. In response to the complaints from petitioners and others, [19] OCF opened a preliminary investigation and asked the Evans campaign to stop using the photograph. The campaign complied with that request. A few days later, on September 5, 2008, OCF initiated a full investigation into whether the campaign had used government resources for election purposes in violation of D.C.Code § 1-1106.51. In the course of that investigation, OCF received responses to the allegations from Councilmember Evans and Chief Lanier. On November 20, 2008, OCF concluded its investigation and issued an order dismissing the complaint. OCF found that Evans had not violated Section 1-1106.51 because the photograph was not taken for a campaign-related purpose and because Chief Lanier consented to pose with [Evans] in the photograph for a personal, not campaign-related, purpose. [20] Upon receiving the dismissal order, petitioners filed a request for review by the Board. Evans was permitted to intervene in the review proceeding. The issue of petitioners' standing to seek review was raised at a pre-hearing conference convened by the Board on January 5, 2009. The question, as the Board's representative explained, was whether petitioners were adversely affected by the OCF ruling so as to entitle them to Board review under 3 DCMR § 3705.4. The Board asked the parties to address that question in their pre-hearing briefs. In response to the Board's request, petitioners' brief linked their standing to appeal OCF's dismissal of their complaint to their standing to lodge that complaint with OCF in the first place: As actual voters in the September 9, 2008 primary and November 4, 2008 general election, we filed a timely complaint in this matter with OCF. OCF accepted our complaint as duly filed. OCF then investigated the matter, issued findings, and ultimately rejected our complaint. Thus, it is undisputed that we had standing to file a complaint in this matter, and the OCF's disposition of our complaint, dismissing it with no action taken, meets the requirement of adversely affected. Petitioners did not identify any other respect in which they personally were affected adversely by OCF's order. They did argue, however, that OCF's ruling would set a dangerous precedent, because it would allow any D.C. elected official or candidate for public office to use a photo of the Police Chief, the Attorney General, or any other non-elected city employee any way he or she may choose in a newspaper campaign advertisement without penalty or reprimand for a violation of campaign or personnel regulations. In their opposing briefs, OCF and Evans argued that petitioners had failed to allege the kind of personal and concrete injury or threat of injury that is required by the Board's rule for standing to appeal. The parties next addressed the standing issue at a hearing before the Board on January 24, 2009. To show that they were adversely affected by OCF's dismissal of their complaint, petitioners relied on their status as qualified Ward 2 voters who had supported and contributed time and money to Evans's opponents in the primary and general elections. [21] As voters, petitioners asserted, they had a stake in fair and honest elections with fair campaign practices, and they feared the precedential effect of the OCF decision in future elections: it would open[] the floodgates for exploiting the Chief of Police and other government officials, and would allow other candidates [to] do the same thing as the Evans campaign had done. To me, petitioner Hanrahan stated, that's a very serious injury that I and the citizens of the District of Columbia would experience, that public employees become fair game for any politician who runs for office. Moreover, as supporters of Evans's opponents, petitioners claimed they were injured because the vote may well have been tainted. According to petitioner Mallof, the challenged advertisement influenced votes (though it was impossible to say how many), [a]nd my injury is my guy lost. Mallof conceded that a cure [for the improper ad] was necessary before the election, not after-the-fact, but argued that effective redress is still possible in the form of a fine (however small or large) and clarification of the campaign finance law by the Board. Petitioners also urged the Board to recognize that the criteria for standing to seek relief before an administrative agency need not be as demanding as the criteria for standing, derived from Article III of the Constitution, to assert a claim in federal court. On January 28, 2009, the Board rendered its decision in an opinion and accompanying order. It ruled that petitioners had not shown they were adversely affected by OCF's dismissal of their complaint within the meaning of 3 DCMR § 3705.4 and accordingly denied their request for review. [22] Declaring that [t]he phrase `adversely affected' is not ambiguous and must be given its plain meaning, the Board found guidance as to that meaning in the District of Columbia Administrative Procedure Act (DCAPA) and the dictionary. Noting that the DCAPA provides for judicial review by persons who are adversely affected or aggrieved by an administrative agency order or decision, [23] the Board viewed the terms adversely affected and aggrieved as essentially equivalent. And, citing a dictionary definition of the latter word, [24] the Board concluded that in order to obtain review of an OCF order, a party must show a substantial grievance, a denial of some personal, pecuniary or property right, or the imposition of a burden or obligation as a result of the order. The Board found that petitioners did not meet that test. It rejected as without merit their argument that because they had standing to file the complaint with OCF in the first place, they necessarily had standing to seek review of an OCF order dismissing the complaint. That argument was fallacious, the Board explained, because under 3 DCMR § 3703(2)(b), any employee or resident of the District of Columbia may complain of a campaign finance law violation to OCF, whether or not the employee or resident has been affected adversely by it. Simply put, an individual need not have `standing' to file a complaint with OCF, and the mere act of filing a complaint with OCF does not render one adversely affected by either a violation of the campaign finance statute, or an OCF order dismissing a complaint alleging such a violation. The Board also rejected petitioners' claim that they were adversely affected because the OCF order established a dangerous precedent for future elections. The potential state of affairs described by [petitioners] is not only speculative, the Board held, but also devoid of any hint of any adverse affect [sic] that is personal to them. Finally, the Board held that to the extent petitioners predicated their standing on the claim that their candidate lost because the election was tainted, they were in the wrong forum to seek any meaningful relief. The Board could not redress that harm even if petitioners were able to prove it; petitioners' sole remedy would have been to ask the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to review and overturn the election. [25]