After San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo spent $ 145,000 on a Washington communications consultant to advance his national profile over two years, she extended her contract again to $ 30,000 for four months.
Stephanie Craig’s Apeiron Strategies Group was first appointed by Liccardo’s office in 2018 and is asking the city to place opinion pieces in major national media under Liccardo’s guideline. Sources in the mayor’s inner circle say that Craig is actually an integral part of the mayor’s communications team.
One ethics expert told San José Spotlight that there is nothing wrong with paying attention to this kind of press. But others question how much Craig’s work benefits the city and how much of it is only aimed at improving Liccardo’s public image.
Last November, the city extended Craig’s $ 7,500 per month contract to June 2021, increasing her total compensation from $ 187,000 to $ 229,000 since the contract began in 2018. The mayor’s office hired Craig for a part-time, temporary concert in 2018, when Liccardo was. undertake regular trips to Washington.
Although it started as a temporary arrangement before the onslaught of a global pandemic that drained the city’s coffers, Craig’s contract has now been extended four times.
The invoices that San José Spotlight obtained through a public records request show that since October 2018, the mayor’s office has relied heavily on Craig to create a national profile for Liccardo and some of his initiatives. Craig was appointed by the time the mayor suspended an important FCC advisory committee in January 2018. She spent 25 hours publishing a call from the mayor in the New York Times in November about his resignation.
Last June, Craig asked the city for another opinion piece in the Times, plus an interview the mayor conducted with the Wall Street Journal and an open one that appeared in the Mercury News under Liccardo’s sideline.
A longtime government liability lawyer told San José Spotlight the issue is complicated by the fact that Liccardo personally benefits from it.
“It’s obviously an ethical issue on a certain level,” said John Sims, an emeritus professor at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific in Sacramento. ‘The crux of the question is how much the city benefits from the work this communications consultant does for the mayor. To the extent that a mayor uses city funds to advance the mayor’s interests and not the city, it is inappropriate. ”
Without a thorough audit of Craig’s work for the mayor’s office, Sims said it’s hard to unravel what’s good for Liccardo’s taxpayers.
But John Pelissero, a senior scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and a political scientist, told San José Spotlight that it is not uncommon for local governments to go outside the firm for public relations.
Pelissero says Liccardo’s contract with Craig may raise questions, but it’s political, not ethical.
“Contractors are hired by cities and states for many reasons, including reputation management and general government promotion,” Pelissero said. “There can be no consensus on how the mayor spends money, but it is a political issue, not an ethical issue.”
Ann Ravel, a longtime local government attorney who, with Liccardo’s approval for a Senate in California election last year, agrees that the benefits of hiring a PR consultant are shared between the city and the mayor.
“It’s one of those things that, depending on what exactly she’s doing, can raise legitimate ethical questions,” Ravel said. ‘Putting opinions in national publications or getting the mayor on TV – although it may benefit him personally and politically, is not going to make him a movie star. But it also makes a national audience realize that San Jose is a place to enter the country. ”
The extension of the contract comes as questions wrap around what is next for Liccardo, who is postponing it to 2022.
The mayor is facing a difficult final for his term as mayor. He is losing his pressure to create a strong mayoral form that will give him more powers and extend his term by two years. He lost his council majority that would ensure his agenda was implemented. And he could lose his ability to appoint lawmakers to commissions, one of the mayor’s most important tasks.
Two of its allies and largest political fundraisers – Carl Guardino and Matt Mahood – no longer lead the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Silicon Valley Organization, respectively. The SVO’s PAC, which financially supported Liccardo, is gone.
Liccardo recently started an advocacy organization called Solutions San Jose to gain some power and control, but it remains to be seen how it will raise funds and what long-term policy it will advocate for.
A Liccardo spokesman maintains that taxpayers benefit from a mayor who is more visible on the national stage.
Liccardo did not agree to an interview.
“San Jose has consistently and historically failed to hit its weight in the national media,” spokeswoman Rachel Davis said. ‘It is the tenth largest city in the country with a national profile that is less prominent than a third of its size. It undermines our ability to get philanthropic dollars from national foundations, to get the attention of Congress and the federal government on funding priorities, and to be a website for (private) investments. ‘
Contact Adam F. Hutton by [email protected] or follow @adamfhutton on Twitter.