Lacey, Kildee Settle Ethics Violations : Politics: The agreement results from the D.A. office’s first effort to enforce the law on political donations.

Two Ventura County supervisors have agreed to forfeit $1,600 in illegal campaign contributions and pay $400 in civil penalties for exceeding the county’s allowable limit on political donations, officials said Tuesday.

Responding to an investigation by the county district attorney’s office, Supervisors Maggie Kildee and Susan K. Lacey headed off a potential civil complaint by paying the fines and turning over the political donations to the county’s general fund, as required under the county’s political ethics ordinance.

The district attorney’s investigation found that Kildee had collected $1,000 from Ahmanson Land Co.’s political action committee and $800 from the California Real Estate Political Action Committee during her campaign last year, exceeding the $750 limit for each contribution.

Lacey accepted $1,000 from the Tri-Counties Central Labor Political Action Committee and $1,800 from the Service Employees Joint Council Political Action Committee. Both contributions from union interests exceeded the legal limits by $1,300.

The two supervisors, who each were fined $200 for violating the county ordinance, said they had no idea that they had broken the law because the legal language is ambiguous.

According to the ordinance, the supervisors can accept donations of up to $750 from individuals and businesses. They can also take contributions of up to $1,800 from political action committees, or PACs, that operate solely in the county.

But if the political action committees operate in other counties--which is the case for the four PACs that donated to the supervisors’ campaigns--the committee’s donations are limited to $750, the ordinance says.

The district attorney’s decision to enforce the ethics law is the first since the supervisors adopted the measure in June, 1991.

Lacey and Kildee both listed the donations properly on their campaign disclosure forms last year and said they believed that they could accept $1,800 from each of the groups.

“I thought a committee was $1,800 and an individual was $750,” said Kildee, who along with Lacey voted in favor of the ordinance two years ago. “Clearly, it was my intent to follow the ordinance. I tried very hard to follow the ordinance and believed that’s what I was doing.”

Kildee said she plans to ask the board to revise the ordinance to clarify its language.

“Here we were involved in writing it and didn’t understand it clearly,” Kildee said. “Anybody that was not involved in it might be in even more difficulty. It becomes almost a trap unwittingly.”

Lacey added: “Obviously we reported all this so we didn’t think anything was wrong with it. This is very confusing.”

Don Coleman, special assistant district attorney, said his office began investigating the matter after receiving a tip that the two supervisors had violated the ethics law.

Since the two supervisors did not appear to have knowingly or willfully committed the violations, criminal prosecution was ruled out, Coleman said.

However, he said, the law allows the district attorney’s office to prosecute any violations by filing a civil complaint.

“We settled it without filing a lawsuit,” he said.

Ed Lacey, Susan Lacey’s husband and campaign treasurer, said they agreed that it would be better to pay the money than to fight the matter in court.

“We decided rather than having a big fight over it and getting in litigation, it would be just as easy to give that money back to the county,” Ed Lacey said. “It’s best to try to resolve it in such a way that no one is doing anything wrong.”