Oakland councilmember asked city contractor to fund her nonprofit

Partygoers gathered to have a good time Diwali, the Hindu pageant of lights, in a Jack London Sq. occasion corridor in October, watching dance performances, listening to music, and consuming heaps of catered meals.

The free bash, attended by a whole lot in response to its organizers, was placed on by Tiger Arts, a nonprofit created final February by Oakland Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, who’s presently  the group’s president. On Fb, Ramachandran stated, “Oakland Diwali 2025 was a NIGHT to recollect!” 

Diwali is like many different cultural celebrations within the metropolis, showcasing the East Bay’s unbelievable range.

However authorities ethics consultants say the way in which the occasion was paid for raises difficult questions on elected officers’ fundraising actions, particularly round behested payments wherein public officers are allowed to behave because the middlemen soliciting limitless quantities of cash from firms and foundations for different organizations. 

To foot the invoice for final yr’s Diwali pageant, Ramachandran solicited cash from a minimum of one firm with enterprise earlier than town, Waste Administration’s Alameda County subsidiary. Ramachandran’s group additionally requested for and obtained assist from a lobbying agency that represents Waste Administration and a number of purchasers who’ve come earlier than metropolis leaders in recent times, asking for contracts and different official metropolis selections affecting their companies.

Ramachandran’s position as a call maker on the Metropolis Council provides her direct authority over some metropolis contracts. Ethics consultants stated this makes it ethically difficult for Ramachandran, in her capability as board president of a nonprofit, to ask firms with enterprise earlier than town to offer cash to her group.

“That’s sort of ticking the entire fallacious packing containers,” stated Delaney Marsco, an ethics director on the Campaign Legal Center.

Behested funds can complicate relationships between elected officers and contractors

Ramachandran’s fundraising exercise most instantly raises questions on how she may deal with metropolis enterprise that includes Waste Administration. 

The corporate sued Oakland final yr over a fancy contract dispute, which continues to be pending in state court docket. Oakland just lately responded by submitting a cross-complaint. The council has been briefed on this case, and someday Ramachandran and her colleagues could also be tasked with approving a settlement or pushing for a trial. 

Ramachandran didn’t reply to interview requests for this story. In an electronic mail, she supplied some particulars concerning the Diwali occasion and famous that Tiger Arts’ sponsors had been listed in a publication and on social media. Ramachandran additionally didn’t reply to a number of written questions, together with whether or not she would recuse herself from any future vote to settle the Waste Administration case. She has not been accused of violating any legal guidelines or ethics guidelines with respect to her nonprofit’s fundraising actions.

Waste Administration officers didn’t reply to interview requests. 

There are comparable questions across the cash Ramachandran’s group obtained from the Kos-Read Group, a lobbying agency that represents Waste Administration and several other companies that had enterprise earlier than town final yr. In a disclosure report, Isaac Kos-Learn, the founder and president of the agency, reported that he had an informational meeting with Ramachandran in 2025 to debate “how [Waste Management] can finest serve Oakland, addressing unlawful dumping and making certain reasonably priced charges.” 

In an electronic mail, Kos-Learn confirmed that Ramachandran’s nonprofit requested him for monetary assist. He stated his agency supplied a “modest sponsorship” according to different occasions they’ve sponsored, however couldn’t recall the precise quantity or when he was contacted. State law solely requires elected officers to report a behested fee if it exceeds $5,000 from a supply in a single yr. 

Ramachandran voted a number of instances final yr on laws that benefited a few of Kos-Learn’s purchasers.

In June, the Metropolis Council approved a deal to offer Becker Boards, an promoting firm, the appropriate to arrange new billboards round city in change for as much as roughly $2.3 million upfront and free adverts for some native organizations, plus hundreds of thousands of {dollars} over the lifetime of the settlement. Ramachandran co-sponsored the laws. She was additionally a part of a workforce of councilmembers who beneficial that the income from this settlement be included within the metropolis’s new funds earlier than the deal had been finalized. Kos-Learn co-hosted a reelection marketing campaign launch for Ramachandran a month earlier than this vote, according to an event flier. 

In December, Ramachandran and the remainder of the council voted to authorize town administrator to barter with Costco and a developer referred to as Deca Corporations for a possible massive field retailer on the previous Oakland Military Base. Deca is a Kos-Learn client. 

That very same month, Ramachandran joined her colleagues in approving laws to forgive $8 million in excellent loans for 2 properties owned by associates of the East Bay Asian Native Improvement Company, or EBALDC. EBALDC is a shopper of Kos-Learn, and final yr, he reported contacting Ramachandran and a number of other different councilmembers to assist “insurance policies, initiatives, and legislative initiatives to assist EBALDC” to protect and keep group developments. 

Kos-Learn instructed The Oaklandside he didn’t pay Ramachandran’s nonprofit to affect her selections round his purchasers. 

He stated his lobbying agency “celebrates each group that makes Oakland so stunning – Vietnamese, Latino, Chinese language, Native American, African American, and extra. So this was a pure complement.”

Elected officers are allowed to ask lobbyists and contractors for donations, however ethics consultants say the apply is fraught

Below California regulation, public officers can ask firms, together with lobbying companies and foundations, to donate cash to organizations, normally native nonprofits and civic teams performing some sort of service. This sort of fundraising, the place the elected official performs a intermediary position, is called a behested payment. 

The foundations for behested funds are totally different from those who apply to politicians’ marketing campaign actions. In contrast to marketing campaign fundraising, there’s no restrict on how a lot cash officers can solicit by means of a behested fee. However they should report any cash they increase that exceeds $5,000 from a single supply in a yr. There are few restrictions on what sorts of teams elected officers can steer the cash to.

This has made behested funds standard amongst California officers. In Oakland, former Mayor Libby Schaaf solicited hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from foundations and main firms for native instructional applications. Mayor Barbara Lee has requested for a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} to assist civic causes and even pay for workers for her workplace. 

By comparability, Ramachandran hasn’t solicited a lot cash. In reviews filed with the Public Ethics Fee, which tracks behested funds in Oakland, the councilmember reported soliciting $5,000 every from Waste Administration and Kaiser Permanente to assist Tiger Arts. 

However Waste Administration’s contribution seems to mark the primary time an Oakland elected official has reported soliciting cash from a metropolis contractor to fund a nonprofit that the official additionally leads as a board president. The Oaklandside was unable to search out an equal instance within the city’s database of fee reviews, which works again to 2017. 

State regulation doesn’t prohibit elected officers from utilizing behested funds to fund nonprofits they run. However ethics consultants say Ramachandran could have created the notion of a battle of curiosity. 

“Even when the whole lot is all above board, there’s at all times now going to be a query within the minds of the general public about whether or not that association was corrupt or not,” stated Delaney Marsco, an ethics director on the Campaign Legal Center who beforehand issued recommendations to San Francisco on learn how to create stricter anti-corruption guidelines round behested funds.

Ramachandran confirmed in an electronic mail to us that she is the founder and board president of Tiger Arts. (Ramachandran additionally makes use of a picture of a tiger as her campaign logo on her web site.)

“I don’t obtain compensation of any form from Tiger Arts or the Oakland Diwali pageant,” Ramachandran wrote.

Marsco stated it’s immaterial whether or not a politician in Ramachandran’s scenario personally obtained any cash by means of her nonprofit.

“They’ve a really critical private curiosity within the success of the nonprofit,” Marsco stated. “The willingness to interact financially on this means with one thing that’s vital to the lawmaker on a private stage creates these circumstances for a battle of curiosity.”

Behested funds have been a car for corruption in different cities

Behested funds have been the main target of reform in different cities due to the actual and perceived conflicts they create. 

One of the infamous instances concerned Mohammed Nuru, head of San Francisco’s Public Works Division. In 2020, federal brokers arrested Nuru and charged him with accepting bribes from metropolis contractors and builders. A element that emerged within the case was that Nuru had used behested funds to solicit a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} from the city’s curbside trash company, whose charges he regulated, to go to a neighborhood nonprofit that he managed. Nuru then used the cash to pay for meals and occasions for himself and his workers. He and a metropolis contractor additionally mentioned the potential of utilizing behested funds to bribe an airport commissioner. 

In a subsequent report, workers on the San Francisco Ethics Fee documented how behested funds had turn into a workaround for officers to solicit favors from lobbyists and contractors. 

Former Supervisor Mark Farrell, in response to the report, steered a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} in behested funds to a nonprofit group he favored. A few of these funds had been made by contractors who had been searching for enterprise with town. Below metropolis legal guidelines on the time, Farrell was barred from soliciting or accepting items from the contractors and lobbyists. However he was legally allowed to ask them to offer cash to a 3rd get together.

“If officers or workers request funds from folks searching for to affect, it will probably create a notion by these folks and by the general public that the funds are solicited in change for the official’s or worker’s assist,” San Francisco’s ethics fee workers wrote within the report. 

In 2022, San Francisco voters approved a ballot measure barring members of the Board of Supervisors from searching for behested funds from contractors if the board had accepted their contract. San Francisco’s ethics guidelines additionally presently prohibit public officers from asking “ events” to make behested funds, with some restricted exceptions. An get together is principally anybody who needs to affect a particular metropolis official. That applies to anybody searching for a license or allow from town, metropolis contractors, folks making an attempt to do enterprise with town, and lobbyists. 

Oakland follows state regulation and has no such restrictions. Elected officers right here look like free to solicit behested funds from metropolis contractors and lobbyists, as long as the fee doesn’t qualify as a present or an election-related contribution. The California Fair Political Practices Commission, which regulates behested funds on the state stage, says officers who solicit cash for a corporation they’re concerned in must disclose that fact of their reviews. 

Oakland does have rules that restrict metropolis contractors from giving cash to politicians. However behested funds aren’t thought-about marketing campaign contributions, so that they aren’t topic to those guardrails, stated Suzanne Doran, govt director of Oakland’s Public Ethics Fee.

“Moreover, since they aren’t thought-about items to the official, they aren’t topic to the Metropolis’s $50 reward restrict for these doing or searching for to do enterprise with the Metropolis,” Doran instructed The Oaklandside.

Davina Harm, the director of presidency ethics on the Markkula Heart for Utilized Ethics, stated it’s comparatively frequent for elected officers to take a seat on the boards of nonprofit organizations and that they’re entitled to assist causes of their communities. 

However this could create issues when an elected official takes on a fundraising position in a nonprofit, she stated, particularly if it includes soliciting cash from companies the official has some authority over.

“A enterprise proprietor may assume if I don’t donate, then issues could also be getting extra troubling for me, or I’ll not get the position I need within the metropolis,” Harm stated. “Even when it’s not the official’s intent, the ability imbalance is actual.”

For his half, Kos-Learn stated his agency has given cash to different nonprofits run by elected officers, however didn’t say whether or not any of them labored in Oakland. Once we requested if his agency had ever contributed cash to assist occasions organized by Oakland elected officers, Kos-Learn stated, “Many.”

Requested if he plans to contribute cash to Tiger Arts once more in 2026, Kos-Learn wrote, “Sure!”