BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A state commission that regulates money in politics has endorsed a rule change to allow Palo Alto Councilwoman Julie Lythcott-Haims to keep getting paid for public speaking while she’s in office.
The rule change would affect all elected officials in California who get paid to speak, not just Lythcott-Haims.
The Fair Political Practices Commission currently has a rule that says elected officials can’t make more than half of their income from speeches, to prevent them from profiting off of public service.
Lythcott-Haims has written three books about race, parenting and youth development, and she does book talks and seminars around the country on those topics. She joined council in January 2023 and has continued to travel and get paid for speeches.
“This is my job, it is my work, it is how I support my family,” Lythcott-Haims said at a council meeting in April 2023.
Lawyer Gary Winuk argued to the FPPC in June that Lythcott-Haims had a bona fide business that was solely related to her published work, and had nothing to do with Palo Alto.
Winuk asked for a change to the regulation “for the sake of the many ‘thought leaders’” who might want to run for office.
Karen Harrison, a senior lawyer for the FPPC, proposed a rule change last week to look at income over a three-year period, rather than a one-year period, to accommodate an author’s schedule.
“Her business had cyclical activity,” Harrison said on Thursday. “One year a book might be published, and payments would be received, and then in following years, it would be promoted. And as a result, while the core of her business may be books, her predominant activity in those later years is related to the promotional activity: making speeches.”
Commissioners asked Harrison if the rule change has any loopholes, and whether it follows the rules that voters approved in 1990 to ban speechmaking as a full-time job.
Harrison said the new rule was carefully drafted and within the voters’ intent.
Commissioner Adam Silver asked on Thursday how the rule change would apply to a doctor who publishes articles in a medical journal or a chief technology officer who gets paid to speak about software that his company is working on.
Harrison said in both cases, the author or speaker would need to show they have an actual business, and that the article or speech is part of that business.
Lythcott-Haims wasn’t at the meeting on Thursday and declined an interview afterwards.
“I am pleased (commissioners) are moving in the right direction, I’m reviewing their proposal and I look forward to working with them as the issue goes forward,” she said in a text message on Monday.
In an April 6 newsletter, Lythcott-Haims said she is evaluating her professional life after an “intense”three-month campaign for Congress that ended in an eighth-place finish.
“Do I return to a career of five or six intersecting roads, or do I narrow it down to a few, or even one?”Lythcott-Haims wrote.
Lythcott-Haims established a California corporation in 2021 called Love Over Time LLC, which has
maintained records of accounting for the past two years, Winuk told the FPPC last year.
That lines up with her most recent book. “Your Turn: How to Be an Adult” was published in April 2021.
Lythcott-Haims published her first book in 2015, “How to Raise an Adult,” followed by a memoir called “Real American” in 2017.
In 2022, Lythcott-Haims had 37 promotional book talks and workshops, and about 85% of them were paid, Winuk told the FPPC in last year.
Lythcott-Haims also received book royalties, and she was paid to write weekly for Meta and to do a
book review for the Washington Post, Winuk said. Lythcott-Haims has “developed herself into a national and international literary figure,” Winuk told the FPPC.
Winuk didn’t say how much Lythcott-Haims makes, but she said on a financial disclosure form that her business is worth between $100,000 and $1 million.
The FPPC and Lythcott-Haims are working around Proposition 112, passed by California voters in 1990.
The goal was to make it harder for lawmakers to profit off of their public service, and for special interests to buy votes.
Thursday’s meeting was an initial discussion. Harrison will come back with a proposed regulation for the FPPC to approve.
In the meantime, Lythcott-Haims said in September that she has reduced the share of her income that comes from book talks below the 50% threshold.
Good news! This rule was never intended to exclude from elected office those people who, before they threw their hat in the ring, were already earning their living by giving speeches. The new exception makes sense to me.
Hey Anonymous, what is your source?
Where did you get your information on that? Source please? Julie, being a Harvard-trained attorney, should have known the law before she ran. She didn’t bother to check into it until after she won. But I’d be interested in knowing your source.
Mac above is right, She should have known better but didn’t care.
And for those of you who didn’t watch the FPPC hearing, you should have because it showed how rigged this was from the beginning. The FPPC lawyer kept citing chapter and verse of their rules clearly showing she was in violation of them and REPEATEDLY the FPPC commssioners directed the lawyer to go back and find a “creative solution” that would let JHL skate.
Many of us who did watch, were amazed and then joked about the repeated use of the word “creative solution” and were reminded about what a farce the FPPC is given how they delayed their ruling about Liz Kniss’s campaign violations until after the election and then gave her a slap on the wrist.
We also wondered who appoints the FPPC commissioners who can produce such UNFAIR Political Practices and how it should be renamed to reflect the unfortunate reality,
Julie can’t be bothered to follow the law. It’s always “look at me! Look at me!” And because we’re all woke, we’re supposed to look the other way when she wants to break the rules. And if you disagree with her, and have the guts to voice your opinion out loud, she’ll brand you as a racist just to silence you.