Poway Unified School District broke state campaign laws by using taxpayer dollars to pay for campaign mailers that encouraged voters to approve a school bond measure five years ago, the California Fair Political Practices Commission has ruled. It also failed to include a required advertising disclosure on the mailers and failed to file a timely campaign spending report as required by law, state election regulators said last week. The commission prescribed a $13,500 penalty for Poway Unified’s violations, which the district agreed to pay. Poway Unified spokesperson Brittanie Arnett said in an email that the violations were unintentional. “(Poway Unified) leadership has carefully reviewed the findings and will work to ensure these types of errors do no occur again in the future,” Arnett said. The violations happened in 2019, when Poway Unified was preparing to place a $448 million bond called Measure P on the ballot for the March 3, 2020, primary election. The bond would have paid for school facility repairs and upgrades that the district said were needed to fix poor campus conditions, as well as helped create career technical education facilities. The bond would have cost $30 per $100,000 in assessed property value. In October 2019, the district distributed about 60,000 copies of a two-sided flyer with language that suggested voters should support the bond measure, the commission found. The flyers were worded in a way “to persuade local voters of the need for significant improvements to school facilities through a local bond measure,” rather than having a neutral and informational tone, the commission said. “Thus, the (mailer) is not a fair presentation of the facts. Given the style, tenor, and timing of this mailing, it unambiguously urged a vote in support of Measure P,” the commission found. The flyers cost the district $34,506. The district had hired a consulting firm to create and distribute them. California’s Political Reform Act, passed 50 years ago to help ensure political transparency and ethics, prohibits the use of public dollars for mass political mailers. The idea is that public dollars should not be used to influence campaigns for elections, which should be decided by the people. “The use of public funds to support or oppose ballot measures is prohibited because of the public harm of taxpayer funds being used to influence the voting public’s views on ballot measures,” the commission wrote in its decision last week. What’s more, the mailers failed to include a required advertisement disclosure saying it was paid for by Poway Unified. Also, because the district paid more than $1,000 for the mailers, it was supposed to file a timely campaign spending report but did not, the commission found. Poway’s bond measure ultimately failed at the ballot box in 2020, receiving only about 50% of the vote — significantly short of the 55% needed to pass. The Fair Political Practices Commission regularly takes years to investigate alleged campaign finance violations, which some have blamed on a large backlog of cases.