Documents kept by the Republican prosecutor on gifts he or his office received show that since 2003, the prosecutor recorded dozens of expensive tickets to concerts, football and baseball games. While he disclosed most of those gifts in the required annual filings with the state, numerous gifts that appeared on his logs were not included in those state records.
Cooley, who is running in part on an anti-corruption platform, said during an August meeting with The Chronicle's editorial board that he has followed all state laws relating to gifts.
Cooley's records were obtained through a public record request made by the campaign of his opponent, San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, and given to The Chronicle, which compared those records with Cooley's campaign filings. Harris is trailing Cooley in most polls in a race where up to one-third of voters say they are still undecided.
"The gift laws are very clear - regardless of the source, if it is valued at more than $50 you have to report it," said Harris' campaign attorney, Jim Sutton. The Chronicle identified at least 17 gifts, totaling thousands of dollars, since 2003 that were missing from Cooley's disclosure reports. Cooley's campaign - which was provided with the list Monday - explained three of the gifts, saying on Thursday that they had not had time to review the full list. All three, they said, did not require disclosure.
Campaign responds
Cooley's campaign lawyer, Dana Reed, said that, generally, because the gift logs record gifts given both to the district attorney's office and Cooley himself, Cooley would not have to disclose those items given to the office.
State law requires public officials to disclose gifts exceeding $50 unless the gift is not used, is returned to the donor or is given to a charity. If a gift is given to an agency, and not an individual public official, it must be distributed by someone who does not benefit from it and be reported by the agency.
State law also caps the value of gifts from any individual to an elected official at $420 a year.
Some of the gifts given to Cooley in recent years - if they had been disclosed on state filings - would have exceeded the annual limit allowed under California law.
In 2009, for example, the wife of a Los Angeles Superior Court judge gave Cooley $254 worth of college football and basketball tickets that were declared, and another $435 worth tickets to the Rose Bowl that he did not list on his annual filing with the state - a total of $689.
Reed said Cooley did not have to disclose the Rose Bowl gifts because he was sick and did not use them. Instead, Reed said, he called the donor, Inger Ong, and she told him to give them to a mutual friend, mediator Charles Baklay.
State law says that as long as a recipient is "directing and controlling" a gift - even if they give it to someone else, for example - they still must disclose it.
The gifts were listed on documents created by Cooley's office, which the prosecutor has said he diligently maintains in order to make sure that he adequately reports all gifts he is required to disclose under the law.
Cooley campaign spokesman Kevin Spillane said the information provided to The Chronicle is "incomplete," and he called the story a "partisan effort to help out the Harris campaign in the final days" before the election.
"You don't have all the information and frankly I am not confident we have all the information," Spillane added. "We haven't been given proper time" to respond.
An August story in The Chronicle revealed that Cooley has accepted - and reported as required by law - thousands of dollars in gifts from prominent people over his time in office.
Harris' records
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