Here are some disturbing issues about current La Mesa City Councilmember Colin Parent who just lost the Nov. 5 race for the 79th Assembly District to LaShae Sharp-Collins, by U-T reporter Jeff McDonald on December 2.
For starters, McDonald reported that throughout the year-plus that Parent ran for the Assembly, he was also soliciting donations to the nonprofit that employs him — Circulate San Diego. (To addictive Rag readers, this is not news, of course, and the name Circulate San Diego should be familiar to many.) McDonald reported:
According to records at the La Mesa City Clerk’s Office, Parent disclosed hundreds of thousands of dollars in what are called behested payments — donations that individuals and companies make to charities at the request, or behest, of elected officials.
And those thousands went to Circulate, who McDonald lets off easily by describing it as “a nonprofit research and advocacy firm committed to promoting public transit, bike lanes and other mobility causes.” Parent is its CEO. He will complete his second term on the La Mesa council and leave office in January.
Critics of Circulate, like a few writers at the Rag, are more accurate and see it as a thinly-disguised developer-aligned lobbying group masquerading as a mass transit and housing advocate with a portfolio crammed full of corporate donors.
The La Mesa council member successfully sought more than $235,000 in donations to Circulate since the beginning of last year, records show. Many of the donations came from real estate interests and government agencies that serve La Mesa.
Parent is the only La Mesa city official to disclose any behested payments since 2018 — except one other. “In all, the La Mesa City Clerk’s Office recorded 85 behested payment filings in nearly seven years, all but one from Parent.”
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported last year that the Circulate San Diego executive director had solicited almost $700,000 in behested payments for the tax-exempt organization over the prior five years.
Parent has denied any wrong-doing and has claimed there was nothing unusual about him soliciting donations for his employer while serving as a La Mesa city official. Parent is a member of the California State Bar.
However, as McDonald writes, “some good-governance experts said they were troubled by the practice.”
“Even if everything is legal, the public perception is horrible,” said Sean McMorris of California Common Cause, a nonprofit that promotes best practices and transparency across government.
“As an elected official, when you’re involved in this kind of activity, where money is exchanged at an elected official’s request, the public has every right to question whether a public official’s loyalty is with the donor or with the public,” he said.
And despite Parent’s claims he never sought contributions to Circulate San Diego from individuals or companies with interests before the city of La Mesa, McDonald reports that, “Documents show a multitude of donations from developers, real estate investors and a host of public agencies that serve the city’s [La Mesa] residents.”
Since last year alone, Parent has disclosed four- and five-figure contributions to his employer from the city of San Diego, the county of San Diego, the Port of San Diego and the University of California, San Diego.
He also solicited a $5,650 contribution from Metropolitan Transit System San Diego and $20,000 from San Diego Gas & Electric, which both provide services to La Mesa.
Federal tax records show that Parent was paid nearly $150,000 in salary by Circulate San Diego in 2022, the latest year for which a public filing is available. The executive director’s compensation accounted for some 15 percent of the organization’s annual spending, the filing shows.
Parent also collected more than $30,000 in base pay and benefits last year for his La Mesa City Council service, according to the Transparent California online database of public salaries.
Fortunately, Parent will leave public office in a month, yet he’ll most probably continue his stewardship of Circulate and continue his sledge work against San Diego planning groups and housing policies, and be one of Mayor Gloria’s advisors.
He has, on dozens of occasions, directly voted on city council decisions involving his donors. He has only recused himself when called to do so by others but is happy to vote on donor’s cases when not called out. Even when called to recuse himself from clear conflicts of interest, he has protested using the same rationale he used in this article that it was “technically legal because Circulate is a nonprofit.” He has also nominated his current Circulate employees for positions on La Mesa commissions, like the planning commission, without disclosing that they were current employees or others who worked for his campaign, He has advocated for donors receiving city contracts and/or positions and public record requests has shown he has sent endorsement letters to council officials for Donor projects on his City Council letterhead despite the projects not being endorsed by the council as a whole.
La Mesa will be better off without him on the council. California will be better off without him as a representative. Hopefully, his ethical violations coming to light ended his political career. I’m sure he will continue to focus on being a developer lobbyist.
Isn’t his group, Circulate SD, a member in good standing of the Todd Squad ?
Youu betcha! Todd and Colin have each other on speed dial. There’s a Tweet floating around somewhere from Todd thanking Colin for being a good friend and always advising him or some other BS.
Colin wanted community planning groups neutered so Todd obliged from what I recall.
Single family home owners are so annoying to Colin & his bestie Toad ?
Let us not forget that the behested payments literally pay his Executive director salary.
Ya this is gross. He’s been doing it for years and it is legal. Just gross.
Seems to me and others…..everyone dodged a cannon ball when Parent was NOT elected.
Well, at least we can agree on that.
Pats – do you see what’s going on here? I’m a registered Democrat but this post is critical of someone else in the same party. Do you think you could do that — be critical of an elected within the GOP? Have you come out against Carl Demaio, for instance?
The true tragedy here is not that this is probably the end of Parent’s political career, which is actually the only positive outcome from his scandalous behavior. The real tragedy is that such corruption is glossed over by his colleagues and even by his political opponents for the most part. The fact that Parent, an attorney, can be this lacking in self examination and intellectual honesty, is stunning. The fact that any politician leans on the excuse that, “technically” something as unseemly as this is “allowed” is evidence of their moral bankruptcy. He knows better or he should know better! Remember the good old days when politicians avoided BOTH “conflicts of interest” AND/OR the “appearance of a conflict of interest.” Parent deserves to be swept into the dustbin of tiny-town political history.
Very well written summation of Colin’s problems.