LBCHAT Viewers – it has come to our attention that local PAC “Citizens for Laguna’s Future” was fined for inaccurate and unreported donations in accordance with mandated reporting guidelines.
Notice: CFLF mandatory reported 460 forms are included below. The PAC’s purpose relates to political candidates and ballot measures.Their 2026 focus states opposition to the upcoming Term Limit ballot measure on November 3, 2026. CFLF 2022 Founder and Treasurer was Glenn Gray. The 2026, Treasurers are Barbara Bowler and Mary Clifford.
Here’s the backstory and explanation on PAC CFLF history shared with LBCHAT for your review. Please feel free to give us feedback. Thank you.
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The PAC Citizens for Laguna’s Future (CFLF) organized in 2022 to oppose the ballot initiative known as Measure Q. Measure Q was trying to create rules that would have forced any large commercial projects (plus other commercial projects that exceeded certain triggers), to go before Laguna Beach voters for approval. The developer/Chamber of Commerce special interests organized CFLF under Treasurer Glenn Grey in opposition to Measure Q.
Laguna Residents First (LRF) was the PAC behind Measure Q. They worked to collect the necessary validated signatures of Laguna Beach voters (10% of the total registered voters) to qualify the imitative for the November 8 2022 general election.
The Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) is a California entity which sets rules for elections. There are very specific rules dictating disclosure of donors and expenditures. As the date of the election nears, the FPPC mandates that PACs immediately report when they collect donations of $5000 or more in any 24 hour period. This is meant to provide all election participants with visibility about how money is coming-in and going-out of PACs. There are also periodic reports required by the FPPC. Typically 90, 60 and 30 days out via form 460. These periodic reports simply allow for Apples to Apples comparisons of income and expenditures by PACs and Candidates.
In the run-up to the November 2022 general election, CFLF failed to report several large-money donations it collected. The effect of this was to blindside the opposition. For example, on 8/3/2022, CFLF received a large donation of $19,800 from the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce. FPPC rules mandated that such a donation be immediately reported within 24hours via form 497. This would have given everyone an idea about the large amounts being collected by this PAC. However, even though CFLF employed expensive campaign consultants, no timely 497s were filed for several large donations. The public only became aware of these donations through the periodic 460 filings. In this case, the $19,800 donation was only reported in the 460 report for the period ending Sept 24Sept2022. These were due by 29Sept2022, but CFLF submitted theirs 5 days late. So a large donation of $19,800 was only “discovered” on October 4 2022, over 2 months late.
Bear in mind too, the CFLF juggernaut was bringing in lots of large donations hand over fist. In a span of a bit over 4 months they had collected more than $222,000 and spent over $207,000. This is in comparison to LRF’s grass roots raising and spending of approximately $78,000 ($20,000 was spent prior to qualification to get the ballot measure onto the ballot but this spend is different). FPPC rules are specifically aimed at shining a spotlight on large amounts of money being spent in elections. Its only when everybody plays by the rules, can we help prevent shenanigans from undermining confidence in elections.
This author scrutinized the 460 filings of CFLF in the run-up to the November 2022 election and thereby discovered several very large donations that were never reported as required. The author notified the FPPC on 10/6/2022 and filed a sworn complaint with the details of these donations as could be discerned from the 460 filings. The complaint was assigned #COM-10062022-03357. After investigating the complaint, the FPPC assigned case number 2023-0009 to the file (you can search the FPPC Complaints website to see details). Finally, after almost 3.5 years, the FPPC felt the many infractions were serious enough to levy a $4000 fine against CFLF. This is quite extraordinary – typically, a 1st infraction will only result in a formal warning letter.
Related Items Viewed Below:
Citizens for Lagunas Future_Complaint
Citizens for Lagunas Future (CFLF) June-Dec 2025
Citizens for Lagunas Future (CLFL) 2026 July 460 (highlight in red the $4,000 FINE to the state)