California Political Corruption Hits New Heights

In the past decade, hundreds of public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges, The New York Times reported Thursday.

According to the Department of Justice, in the last 10 years, 576 public officials have been found guilty of federal corruption, in what authorities called an “extraordinary” wave, the Times reported.

Perhaps none to the extent of one former city councilman, José Huizar, according to the Times.

Huizar's rags to riches story led to a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, where he found himself in charge of approving multimillion-dollar developments.

Huizar was caught accepting bribes in exchange for favors, and this week, he is scheduled to report to prison after a judge sentenced him to 13 years in prison on charges of racketeering and tax evasion. He is the third recent former council member to go down, according to the Times.

In March, a former deputy mayor and long-time Los Angeles city official was found guilty of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribe money and coordinating payoffs from property developers to Huizar.

Raymond Chan was found guilty on all 12 felony counts, which were part of a long-running conspiracy that corrupted the approval of city real estate projects. Huizar alone received $1.8 million in bribes over the course of his tenure, more than twice the amount recently convicted Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey accepted, according to the report.

One of the alleged chief financiers of the scheme was Chinese billionaire Wei Huang, who had been bribing Huizar in the hopes of getting an approval for what he hoped would be the tallest skyscraper in the western U.S., according to the report. Huang is now a fugitive and believed to have fled to China.

Federal investigators say the conditions in California’s largest cities make it ripe for corruption.

“When you have that kind of power, pay-to-play schemes run amok,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada told the Times. “I wouldn’t call it ordinary what these folks did. It is extraordinary.”

Some political exchanges are less overt, state Republicans say. GOP lawakers suggest Gov. Gavin Newsom has not been immune from the temptation of rewarding donors with lax regulations.

In March it was revealed that billionaire donor and Panera Bread franchise owner Greg Flynn would see his stores exempt from the state’s new minimum wage law because his particular business was deemed to be just slow enough to not be considered fast food.

California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones said, “Panera Bread, which just so happens to be owned by one of his billionaire buddies from high school that just also so happened to give him over $160,000 in campaign funds during that same period of time.”

Dan Schnur, former head of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, cautioned on the temptations to bend the rules when there is no legitimate opposition.

“When a political party enjoys that much uncontested power, there’s no penalty for stepping over ethical or legal lines,” he said.