“From June 17th to 23rd of 2008, the blog they say I run posted eight times. What was I doing during this period? I was on my honeymoon,” Bump wrote on July 24. “In fact, I was bopping around upstate New York in an RV with no internet access. Then, there’s January of this year, when I was in Switzerland and France, sledding and what-not.”
Huffington Post contributor Bump held the title of “political director” at the labor council — the same position Cindy Chavez occupied before voters elected her to the San Jose City Council. Chavez, who lost the 2006 mayor’s race to Chuck Reed, today heads the labor council, which paid Bump up until recently.
In addition to working for the Labor Council, Bump has worked directly for Working Partnerships USA, a 501c3 nonprofit that is largely funded by charitable foundations. SBLC and WPUSA share offices and staff, including a common executive director: Cindy Chavez.
On Jan 7, 2003 Bump posted to his personal website: “alright. i got a job. start tomorrow. about g.d. time. i am now the communications (and tech) person for working partnerships. step one — redesign the website.”
Chavez has been silent throughout the controversy over Bump and San Jose Revealed, in which her husband has been named as a suspected collaborator.
Mercury News columnist Scott Herhold this week published a detailed comparison of Bump’s writing with the posts on San Jose Revealed. Citing the common tendency of both Bump and Revealed to punctuate sentences with clichéd exclamations like “ouch” and to begin sentences with “Long story short” among other signature phrases, Herhold concluded that Bump is the writer.
Herhold also called on Chavez to “speak up and explain labor’s ties with the New York consultant.” Echoing the story that appeared in SJI a day earlier, he concluded : “[I]n many ways, Revealed resembles a well-done political hit piece with no one’s name at the bottom. We finally have a very good clue about who the sponsors are.”
Following the Money
The ambiguous financial relationship among the entities related to San Jose Revealed may violate federal law.
The Labor Council is joined at the hip with Working Partnerships USA. Much wealthier than SBLC, Working Partnerships is a funding source for some of the union group’s activities. In 2003, WPUSA had $2.75 million in revenues, while the Labor Council’s budget that year was only $717,743, according to an internal document obtained by San Jose Inside.
The budget document reveals that 35 percent of the union group’s anticipated revenue was to be paid by tax-exempt Working Partnerships in the form of salary reimbursements, administrative support and rent.
Under IRS code, 501(c)(3) organizations “that are exempt from federal income tax are prohibited from participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office.” Working Partnerships executives — Chavez, Bob Brownstein and Steve Preminger — are all active in local political campaigns though presumably they do it “off the clock.”
In addition, the IRS states that “no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation.” WPUSA executive director Chavez is a registered lobbyist with the City of San Jose.
The Labor Council has also received funds from the local Democratic Party and the United Way. Document.
Working Partnerships receives funding from foundations such as the Packard Foundation ($50,000 in 2008), the Hewlett Foundation ($125,000 in 2005) and the Irvine Foundation, which on March 9, 2009 announced a $450,000 grant to enable WPUSA “to facilitate participation of diverse residents in decision making on local and state budget issues and governance reform topics.”
WPUSA has also sought local tax dollars. In 2002, Working Partnerships asked the County Board of Supervisors for $500,000 from the general fund to assist Union Community Resources, a social services organization affiliated with Working Partnerships and the United Way.
The letter came from Steve Preminger, Working Partnerships’ Director of the Union Community Resources Program who also serves as chair of the Santa Clara County Democratic Party. Preminger’s salary was paid at one point by the United Way at the request of labor leaders. County officials issued a memorandum recommending denial of the request.
(On April 28, 2009, the Dalai Lama named Preminger one of the world’s 49 “Unsung Heroes of Compassion.” Working Partnerships executive director Chavez commented on the honor. “This recognition is well deserved. Steve has touched the lives of hundreds and hundreds of families in need,” she said.)
Preminger came in as runner-up in a poll by the Mission City Lantern blog as a key figure involved with San Jose Revealed. While not scientific or conclusive, the poll indicates that at least some people think the Democratic Party chair is involved with a blog that slings nasty epithets at its political adversaries and publishes maps to their homes.
Because SBLC and WPUSA won’t open their books for scrutiny, it’s impossible to know definitively whether SBLC lobbying and campaign activities are illegally benefiting from WPUSA’s tax exempt fundraising activities. When journalists from Metro newspaper or San Jose Inside have raised questions about SBLC/WPUSA funding sources, they have been subjected to vicious, repetitive, anonymous personal attacks from the blog site that has become SBLC’s de facto political voice.
Santa Clara County District Attorney George Kennedy looked at SBLC financials after a 2004 Metro piece but declined to investigate and instead passed the information on the California Department of Corporations, after which nothing was heard. Given the reluctance of current Santa Clara County District Attorney Dolores Carr and California Attorney General Jerry Brown to pursue political investigations and prosecutions, the commingling of funds, personnel, office space and monetary transfers between the charity-funded, tax-free WPUSA and the SBLC lobbying and campaign teams is likely to continue.
So the question remains: Did funds from charities fund WPUSA, which paid the Labor Council and Bump, indirectly fund San Jose Revealed’s attacks on Chavez’s enemies list after she lost the 2006 mayoral race?
If that’s the case, then taxpayers contributed as well, since a tax-exempt non-profit is, in effect, publicly-subsidized.
Thanks for doing what all good reporters need to do: follow the money.
This really requires further investigation from someone with authority to demand information like e-mails and bank statements. If the charges and information you’ve laid is true, this is devasting.
Good reporting
Unfortunately, the relevant issues that you raise here will be routinely dismissed by numerous and various critics because they will automatically conclude that you have a professional or personal agenda. That would be highly regrettable and in many ways tragic. I suggest everyone look at the facts and then decide if what local labor is doing is either legal or ethical. Let’s not shoot or dismiss the messenger, regardless of what you think of the messenger.
This will all go away if Cindy says something.
She should say that they were funding Bump or they were not.
If they were, they need to own up.
If they weren’t,let’s move on.
You guys did a good job of fleshing this out.
You suggest that the only legal recourse is a criminal investigation by the District Attorney or Attorney General. If there are persons who have been wronged and can prove that this site caused them financial, professional, or even emotional harm, there’s a real case to take to the courts.
We have a new poll up, and for the third week in a row, Bump has led the voting. People in Santa Clara have told us on many occasion that Bump acted as he had has own agenda, and often that agenda conflicted with labor. He indicated to us in a frantic phone call that he, Bump, was frightened of Pulcrano for what he, Bump, had written about him in the past. Bump even admitted that the call was frantic attempt to deflecty the questions we have asked.
The Lantern has asked Chavez and Potter as well to explain the issues involving Bump and his use of San Jose Revealed to attack labor endorsed candidates. No answer as they created an alter ego that fueled his own desire to be a player.
The Lantern suspended our poll and offered to move on if the players involved contacted us and showed us the story. The Lantern asked Bump directly during the phone call to explain, confirm, or deny everything on a call with Pulcrano there, and that Bump could have a representative on his end as well. Bump then began an irrational tirade about how Metro was out to get him.
If Chavez called me at anytime and offered to discuss it, I would personally come to her side on this matter because I still admire her work, and have long been an admirer of Steve Preminger. The offer still stands, but unless we and others get treated with respect based on this data, it is one that is not going be around much longer. The progressive, pro labor Democratic movement in Silicon Valley needs to shed this image, and it did fight successfully and rightly so for a big box ordinance in Santa Clara, but it seems the people most willing to shed blood for labor are getting stabbed in the back by Bump, who seems to have his own storm trooper mentality.
A sock puppet is busted
For weeks, South Bay political observers have been trying to figure out who is behind the very personal and nasty blog San Jose Revealed.
Dan Pulcrano of Metro and Scott Herhold of the Merc think they have figured it out—Philip Bump, who apparently has ties to the South Bay Labor Council and its chief executive Cindy Chavez, who lost the race for mayor to Chuck Reed. The blog attacks Reed’s people, which kind of made it easy to figure out which faction in town was behind the blog.
Metro and the Merc took different approaches to smoking out the sock puppet. Herhold took the academic approach, comparing the writing styles of the blog and another blog that Bump admits to authoring. Pulcrano, on the other hand, bases his accusation against Bump on “electronic evidence.”
For what it’s worth, San Jose Revealed hasn’t posted a new item since Sunday. Maybe they caught him?
http://sfppc.blogspot.com/2009/07/sock-puppet-is-busted.html
Dear Bored,
Don’t change that channel. The show is just getting started. Remember, Watergate started as a boring burglary story.
WOG
4 questions for Silicon Valley Newsroom:
1. Doesn’t the whole thesis of this article disintegrate rather quickly if Bump, or whoever, writes the blog on his/her own time?
2. If there are laws against doing political activity while “on the clock” at a nonprofit, wouldn’t it make sense to avoid any legal pitfall by simply writing the blog from home?
3. If SJRevealed is going to stake it’s reputation by slinging arrows at high profile targets, isn’t it likely that he/she would be smart enough to do so in a way that passes legal scrutiny?
4. Do you have any evidence to support the article’s clear implication that Bump broke the law by writing his blog as part of his paid duties at a nonprofit? Or, for that matter, that he has been paid by anyone for blogging?
I’m not sure what, if anything, has been proven here. Even if Bump is SJRevealed, you have not established anything other than speculation that an illegal act has been committed. That doesn’t seem fair.
Perhaps the author can respond to these questions?
By the way, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’m just a Reader trying to make sense out of San Jose’s BlogWars.
#10
1. If Bump’s getting paid as a contractor all his time is his own. Labor Council needs to answer questions about what his role was, and whether they were directing him.
3. San Jose Revealed has no reputation. It’s a hit site filled with misinformation that’s anonymous and unaccountable.
This is not a blog war. It’s a political scandal of grand proportions. Look at the documents and you’ll see that millions of dollars were raised to take over the city council and enrich a associates at the public’s expense.
Keep digging!
I always wondered how the laborites got into power… now its obvious that they duped a bunch of well intentioned foundations into giving millions to their nonprofit “to help the poor.”
It’s pretty obvious that it was used to steer contracts to Neil Struthers’ associates, pay political consultants and tarnish the good names of people like Tony West.
It seems the press has designated themselves as judge, jury, and executioner. Now burn them at the stake!
I have said that if SJ Revealed does have a byline, I believe the matter is resolved.
It is curious to call fairness in play for SJ Revealed used to play fast and loose and no one called SJ Revealed for using their claim for investigative pieces.
SJ is not the Scarlett Pimpernell, he is more the Musard Yellow Bumpernell.
Sorry, I need to correct the last sentence in my #13 post. A computer error resulted while I was doing a cut and paste from Word. What I meant to say is, “So what is next, now let’s burn them at the stake?”
I would like, again, to point out the stark contrast between the forces of SUNSHINE LAWS and TRANSPARENCY and the forces of BACKROOM DEALS and ANONYMITY.
In the last twelve months we have elected a mayor partly on his dedication to tranparency, and routed a mayoral candidate connected to backroom deals. Now we have a Labor Group constantly berated for its anonymous complaints and ethics charges, factless accusations, promotion of nonattributable attack sources, and support of non-public labor negotiations. Not to mention this article’s obvious conclusion about the misuse of public and charity funds for obviously partisan purposes—which could be proved if only we could see their tainted and corrupt accounting books.
The same last twelve months have seen political clashes between forces within China and Iran over the issue of transparency versus cultural hegemony.
Sometimes I feel like we are in another transformational era, like the raising of the Berlin Wall.
Outing San Jose Revealed may be a small thing to some, but to me it is a blow for the forces of good, transparency, annotation, and the rule of law.
Thanks to everyone involved.
And as for #13>> “Press has designated themselves judge, jury, and executioner…”—if by ‘designated’ you mean ‘brought facts to the table’, then I am not opposed to it.
Good … now follow the emails.
The California Public Records Act (CA PRA)
“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
Organized Labor is legal organized crime.
Keep following the money and those connections, and let’s see the other shoe drop!
Bump’s continued use of the boxing comments was clearly his inside joke. As you recall, the boxer in ON THE WATERFRONT, is the one who spills the beans.
Bump was known to make such inside jokes.
Mr. Rowen,
I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. If Mr. Bump were to admit to the authorship of the blog and a byline were to suddenly appear, the issue is far from settled. From a variety of news reports, it appears that Mr. Bump was indeed writing this blog but with perhaps a great deal of assistance and resources from people in leadership roles in organized labor and the local Democratic party.
Was this blog then not just an anonymous attempt by a juvenile writer to besmirch Mayor Reed, his staff, and allies, but rather a consorted effort to influence public policy and destroy projects and/or reputations?
If so, let us not unduly focus on Mr. Bump but rather the people behind Mr. Bump. His role, though prominent, is far more like the driver of a getaway car for a bank heist. It would indeed be shameful if the masterminds behind this effort were held unaccountable.
Finally, Mr. Rowen, I commend you for initiating this line of scrutiny and hope you continue your admirable efforts.
L. Smith
#14
Who has written the various stories on revealing Revealed? I’ve never heard of Mr. Newsroom.
What does any of this prove? Everything you wrote is common knowledge. Working Partnerships and Labor are linked? Well, duh, they share offices and people. They paid Phil Bump as political director, a post that ended almost two years ago? We all knew that. How does that prove that Bump is SJR and that if he is, he’s FUNDED by Labor?
A blog costs $9.00 per year for a URL. The rest is free software from google. I don’t see how anybody is FUNDING SJR. Even if Phil is friends with Labor folks and they feed him info, where is there any wrongdoing if he in fact does put the words to webpage?
I can’t believe this vendetta witch hunt. SJI (and even more so, Lantern) dishes out plenty of nasty attacks on political enemies. Now the tables are turned and there are allegations of illegal activity. Enough.
“not scientific or conclusive”
It’s not even a real poll. There is absolutely nothing to glean from a random poll on Rowen’s website. I can’t believe you even degrade your argument by mentioning it. Heck, I voted in his poll for somebody I know it isn’t just for fun.
I do not think James Rowen can be the author of the blogs on Mission City Lantern. Those blogs are grammatically well written and thought out. The blogs he writes on San Jose Inside are normally filled with grammatical errors and sometimes leaves the reader wondering what he has just read. If we are going to apply this standard to the writer of San Jose Revealed then Mr. Rowen is fair game too, especially since the Mission City Lantern does much the same thing as San Jose Revealed does.
I don’t know, but it sure looks like something very wrong is going on here. How can a commingled political organization/501c3 both accept foundation support and engage in electioneering? That’s specifically outlawed under IRS code.
Looks like these guys are playing a lot of games by putting people on payroll, taking them off, saying they are doing it at home, denying knowledge. It smells bad. Really bad.
The SBLC should open its books if it has nothing to hide, and the foundations should demand a thorough audit or cut off funds There are many worthy groups that deserve funding which don’t play these kinds of games.
Working Partnerships is a political organization posing as a do-gooder group in order to take advantage of the IRS’s charitable provisions. It’s a scam, and everyone can see it.
Did the people posting skeptical comments about this report click the links?
http://www.sanjoseinside.com/img/sblc_june-julymonthly report.pdf
http://www.sanjoseinside.com/img/SBLC_2003_budget.pdf
This is one of the better pieces I’ve read on SJI. The article lays its thesis with a graph showing how the money flows, and then backs it up with documents, legal code sections and research. It finally helped me understand what is going on in this city.
Am glad to see there are some people here who are willing to weather the personal attacks and smear campaigns to do the right thing. There’s obviously no money in civic journalism these days, and a big downside to stepping forward to present information that will no doubt bring rock throwing. Our community is lucky to have this kind of courage.
Let’s not forget about the former Chavez intern who was caught hacking into City Hall computers digging up dirt.
This 19 year old whose life story of rising up through very humble means, was soon represented by one of the highest paid lawyers in the valley. Plead out a deal before evidence could be brought to public trial or something like that?
It would have been very interesting to follow how and why he was doing this, and who paid his bills.
Dolores Carr, where are you?
# 28 She’s talking to the Dalai Lama.
Geez. Its so sad.
Back in the 70s San Jose was blessed with one of what many considered to be one of the 10 best newspapers in the country. Now its reduced to opinion columnists that do handwriting analysis, supplemented with a blog site that tries desperately to sound objective while doing everything it can to tear down folks representing an opposing opinion.
Never heard of this guy, Phil Burp, until I read about him in SJI. In any event, Cindy Chavez is irrelevant… ancient history… and all washed up in local politics.
Lest any candidate around the country that believes in good government hire Bump, there should be a mark of Phil placed on him.
#26 Sam: I respectfully disagree. Questioning questionable reporting is not “rock throwing.” It’s what readers
I don’t see why you are impressed by this articles graphs and various links to documents.
On first glance this looks like a well-researched article, but if you take the time to look at the links provided you have to ask What, exactly, do they prove?
SJI is apparently trying to establish that:
1. Phillip Bump is the author of SJRevealed.
2. Money from nonprofits was illegally funneled to Bump to pay him to write the blog.
To support the claim SJI offers a series of links. Let’s take them one at a time:
The first link is just a link to a previous SJI article. (Offering your own article as “proof” ?)
The second link is to an opinion piece by a Merc columnist.
The third and fourth links are links to the IRS web site. Apparently this is done to establish that laws have been broken, but there’s nothing linking Bump to these IRS violations. These links only tell us that laws exist.
The 5th link shows that 9 years ago, in June of 2000, South Bay Labor Council received funding from a political party and United way. It also shows that the money was for “rental.” The article does not establish how this is becomes political activity, much less blog writing in 2009. (But then, could anybody really object if the Democratic party is involved in politics? Anyone, that is, besides Republicans
)
The 6th and 7th links relate to a letter the head of the Democratic party wrote seeking special funding for Working Partnerships from the County. The County rejected the request. End of story. (How does Working Partnerships misapply money it never received?) Note that once again the dates don’t make sense. This issue occurred in 2002. “Bump Gate” is happening in 2009. How are the two connected?
And finally we get to links 8 and 9. Link number 8 takes us to a political blog, Mission City Lantern’s speculation about SJI. (OK, on behalf of SJI and Scott Herhold’s readers somebody’s got to ask the obvious question: When the hell did Mission City Lantern become a credible news source?)
Link 9 takes us to a Metro article from 2004 about a DA’s investigation that resulted in no charges, and does not seem to involve the funding of the anonymous blog in 2009 which is the thesis of this article.
Lots of razzle-dazzle: links, charts, smoke and mirrors, all of which establish absolutely nothing. These link are a dead end. Some of them, such as links to SJI/Metros own articles, are kind of silly. Sam, the appearance of research is not research.
None of it proves, or even contributes to proof, of SJI’s thesis that the author of a rival blog committed an illegal act by funding a political blog through misappropriation of 501c3 nonprofit money for political purposes.
And again, I am not a partisan in this dispute, just a Reader who questions the reporting in this article.
I welcome Silicon Valley Newsroom’s response to this post as well as the questions posed in #10.
#20: Note that James Rowen is a member of the Democratic Central Committee. He continues to lambaste members of the party, but does nothing as a member of the committee. I understand he has missed more meetings than he has attended since his term started in January.
#26: If this is the best piece you’ve read on SJI, that’s because most of the material posted here is a waste of good bits and bytes.
Commendation from Clark Williams regading service to the bylaws committee had an instead of en. never met dan rowan
#21 This story includes contributions from several writers, principally the team of Metro’s unbylined polical column, The Fly.
Does Mr. Eastsider cash his liquor store checks with that name?
If Jerry Brown and Dolores Carr are willing to look the other way and not investigate this pattern of activity, maybe it’s time for a federal investigation.
It seems there are some sections the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act (RICO) that apply:
Ssection 1513 – retaliating against an informant. Labor retailiated against Metro for reporting on its financial activities.
Section 1951 – interference with commerce. Clearly the objective of these hate campaigns is to damage local businesses by damaging the owners’ reputations.
Section 1956 – laundering of monetary instruments (see above chart)
Section 501(c) – Embezzlement from union funds. Phaedra’s reported purchases of items for family members with organization funds.
Section 1028 – fraud and related activity in connection with identification documents. Bump’s anonymous activities are an attempt to fraudulently conceal the identities of his funders.
#33-Reader,
I couldn’t have said it better. Just because they put up graphs, charts, and links to the IRS doesn’t make their case. This article proves SJR’s case by saying none of the authorities they went to found a reason to persue criminal charges. Case closed.
Again, it looks like the press has appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner.
Where is this weekends Rants and Raves? Did they neglect to put it up so we’d be forced to blog about this silly Bump Gate?
P.S.
Reader,
Non profits, depending on their BY Laws, can be lobbyists, and particpate in campaigns. Go read all the guidelines on non-profits and you’ll see that for yourself. Don’t just stop at the links posted here.
Just caught up with you reporting from Manhattan guys. Here’s some more meat for ya. Phil’s working on the Gioia campaign for public advocate. But right now he’s only getting paid $2K a month. Looks like he has time and could use the dough from other sources.
Ok maybe Phil Bump is SJR or at least a big part of it. So what? As #22 said above, it doesn’t cost much to set up a blog. I highly doubt he would need Labor Resources to fund SJR. Any payment he’s received from Labor doesn’t necessarily have to do with work from the blog as he’s been a consultant for them a long time doing all kinds of other work.
All of this other stuff with the pretty charts, graphs, and arrows is really a non-story. The SBLC/Working Partnerships connection is well known and more than likely not an illegal operation. I mean George Kennedy (and maybe Dolores Carr too) wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of organized labor and if he could’t find a reason to prosecute then there was probably nothing there.
For the record I am and have always been interested in SJR’s true identity for my own personal curiosity. Certainly there’s been a solid case that it’s Phil Bump with Herhold and the other blogs coming up with some evidence. But we’re still not 100% certain and Metro’s story really isn’t about San Jose Revealed, it’s about taking down Labor. SJR is just the pathway they’re using to accomplish the goal.
I neither know nor care who writes SJR. I looked at it a couple of times and found it not worth the energy to bring it up. However…
#11 wrote:” San Jose Revealed has no reputation. It’s a hit site filled with misinformation that’s anonymous and unaccountable.” Kinda like you and everyone else who blogs under a pseudonym, AJ—anonymous and unaccountable.
There is more to this than SJR. Working Partnerships seems to exist primarily to pay the salaries of union political operatives.
That’s fine if Working Partnerships wants to exist as a Political Action Committee. But they want to exist as a 501(c)3, take a big tax deduction, and advertise themselves as a charity.
It’s as though someone created a church purely to hire those who volunteer on Republican campaigns. It’s dishonest, and a complete abuse of the tax code.
It’s also an abuse of campaign finance laws. It means that the salary from WPUSA is actually payment for campaign work. As such, it is a reportable campaign expense that has not been reported.
Hmm…I guess I’ve been stonewalled on #10 & 33.
The silence says a lot!
Hey #44. The only silence that is telling is that from the Labor Council, especially head honcha Cindy Chavez and that of Phil Bump who was confronted by reporters and ended up taking the fifth.
What happened may be illegal. But no question that it was sleazy politics.
We need to keep digging to get to the bottom of this pile.