Quick Take
California rightly does not treat every criminal conviction as a lifetime ban on public service. But the standards might need to be different when an elected position carries responsibility for children. The Pajaro Valley school board race has exposed gaps in both eligibility standards and candidate verification. Lookout’s editorial board believes AB 2691 should pass — and that lawmakers should keep working to get the balance right.
Editor’s note: A Lookout View is the opinion of our Community Voices opinion section, written by Community Voices Editor Jody K. Biehl and Lookout founder Ken Doctor. Our goal is to connect the dots we see in the news and offer a bigger-picture view — all intended to see Santa Cruz County meet the challenges of the day and to shine a light on issues we believe must be on the public agenda. These views are distinct and independent from the work of our newsroom and its reporting.
Who should be able to run for public office, and who actually checks their background?
These questions surfaced amid Lookout’s recent reporting on the Pajaro Valley Unified School District school board race, where a candidate with felony convictions for assault and misdemeanor convictions for child endangerment has filed for – and is legally eligible to appear on – the Nov. 3 ballot.
The questions surrounding the race extend beyond Curt Street Wilcox’s criminal record.
They also include uncertainty about whether Wilcox actually resides in the Watsonville-area home he listed on his candidacy paperwork, after he acknowledged to Lookout correspondent Hillary Ojeda that his residential address “kind of varies” and that he used his father’s Watsonville address while seeking to buy a property.
Wilcox’s candidacy highlights broader questions: When should a criminal conviction make someone ineligible to seek an elected position? Should the answer depend on the responsibilities of the office? And when a candidate’s residency is in question, who determines whether they actually meet the basic eligibility requirements to serve?
School board members are entrusted with the education, safety and well-being of children. They help set policy, oversee district leadership and make decisions affecting thousands of students and families. Yet, as this case highlights, California law places remarkably few limits on who can seek elected office.
Under current law, certain felony convictions – including bribery, embezzlement of public money, extortion, theft of public money and perjury – disqualify someone from holding any state or local elective office. That financial stricture makes a lot of sense for anyone dealing with public money.
But convictions involving child endangerment, child sexual assault and human trafficking are not on that list. Such restrictions would also make sense for anyone coming into contact with children.
Voters, of course, can decide whether a candidate’s record makes that person unfit for office. And they will do so in the case of 65-year-old Wilcox, who did not return the editorial board’s calls, but who told Lookout reporter Hillary Ojeda that there is a difference between looking at the facts of his cases and looking only at the convictions, and that none of his convictions are among the crimes that would legally bar him from office.
Leaving the question entirely to voters exposes a gap in California law.
The state has already decided that certain convictions are incompatible with public office, yet it has not made the same determination for other serious crimes that may bear directly on the responsibilities of a particular elected position. In Wilcox’s case, for example, the law sets no disqualification based on his felony assault conviction or his misdemeanor child-endangerment conviction, even though he is seeking a seat on a school board.
That raises a question voters should not have to answer on their own: Should the law recognize that some convictions may be especially relevant to the duties and responsibilities of a specific office – in this case, a school board?
We don’t believe a criminal record should automatically become a lifetime ban on public service. People serve their sentences, change their lives and, in many circumstances, deserve a second chance.
But a school board is not an ordinary public office.
Board members govern institutions whose central responsibility is the education and well-being of children, and whose work might put them near children. That makes it reasonable to ask whether certain convictions involving children should be incompatible with serving on a school board.
Assemblymember Dawn Addis, whose District 30 includes part of Santa Cruz County, is currently asking the state to reconsider our standards.
Assembly Bill 2691, the Public Trust Protection Act, which she co-authored, would add felony sexual assault and human trafficking to the crimes that disqualify someone from seeking or holding any state or local elective office. The bill passed the Assembly 67-0 in April and is now before the state Senate.
We support the bill. But we also wonder if it does enough.
California has wrestled with this question before.
In 2012, lawmakers considered AB 2410, which initially proposed a 20-year prohibition on seeking elective office for people convicted of felonies involving conflicts of interest, fraud, dishonesty, breaches of public trust or money laundering. As the bill moved through the Legislature, it narrowed. The version lawmakers ultimately passed permanently disqualified those convicted of specific felony financial and public-integrity crimes.
That history illustrates how difficult it is to make these decisions.
The question isn’t whether people who have served their sentences deserve a second chance; many do. The question is whether certain crimes are so closely connected to the responsibilities of public office that the law should impose additional restrictions on who may serve.
AB 2691 would make that judgment for the two additional categories, but it does not address every serious crime. The bill would not address felony assault, child endangerment or child cruelty. Under current law, those convictions do not make someone ineligible to run for a school board. That is the law as it stands, and Wilcox is legally eligible to run.
But perhaps the law should go even further – as Delaware does – and add child-related convictions. Delaware has a tiered system that bars those convicted of misdemeanor crimes against children from school-board service for five years.
We believe California should consider a similarly narrow, office-specific standard for serious crimes involving children — one that recognizes the particular responsibilities of the state’s 935 school boards without imposing a lifetime ban on public service for every criminal conviction.
Whether such a line can be drawn fairly and legally deserves serious consideration — and, likely, a team of lawyers to get it right.
Election officials should not be put in the position of making subjective judgments about someone’s eligibility.
The solution need not be that every felony conviction makes someone ineligible for every elected position. A person convicted of a crime involving a child who seeks a water district seat, for example, presents a different public-trust question from someone seeking a school board seat.
That leads to another problem exposed by the PVUSD race: determining whether candidates actually meet the requirements to appear on the ballot.
Hillary Ojeda’s reporting shows that county election officials generally verify the information required to file, but do not routinely investigate objective eligibility requirements such as a candidate’s criminal record or whether the candidate actually lives in the district.
Election officials are not detectives or prosecutors. But if the law says a felony conviction makes someone ineligible for office, shouldn’t there be a reliable way to identify that before a candidate’s name reaches the ballot?
Residency presents a similar challenge. It is easy to say candidates should meet clear residency requirements. But determining what “residence” means in real life can be tricky. What about someone couch-surfing after losing a home? Someone rebuilding a residence after a fire? Someone living in an office while going through a divorce?
Delaware again offers an instructive model. Its school board candidates are provisional until the state election commissioner reviews criminal background checks and the child protection registry clears their candidacy. The state also requires candidates to meet residency requirements.
California could consider a similar system: not an intrusive investigation into every candidate’s private life, but a standardized process for verifying the basic qualifications the law already requires.
The PVUSD race raises a broader issue: that being legally eligible to run is not necessarily the same as meeting the minimum standard we should expect for a position of public trust.
California has begun to reconsider those standards through AB 2691. Lawmakers should pass it – and then keep examining where the law falls short.
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