By Lookout Staff

August 21, 2024 -- Those wishing to reward a Santa Monica City official with a gift as "a token of appreciation" for an official act might want to think twice.

Under a proposed ordinance the City Council is expected to approve Tuesday, the official receiving the gift could be prosecuted for a misdemeanor or fined up to $500.

Councilmembers directed City Attorney Doug Sloan to propose a measure after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June "purports to allow city officials to accept gratuities" unless barred by local law, according to the report from staff.

The proposed ordinance, would "prohibit acceptance of gratuities by public officials as a reward or token of appreciation for any official act performed by the public official." according to the brief report to the Council from the City Attorney's office.

The decision in Snyder v. United States stated that "providing state and local officials with tokens of appreciation for their official action" does not "subject those officials to federal prosecution," staff wrote.

The tokens of appreciation include "gift cards, meals, event tickets, or cash payments."

"At the same time, the Court reiterated that the decision does not affect the ability of state and local governments to regulate gratuities," staff noted.

A gratuity, the report noted, "differs from a bribe in that a gratuity is given after, rather than before, the official act."

The proposed ordinance "will prohibit any City official from accepting or soliciting, directly or indirectly, anything of value from any person to whom the official has conferred a public benefit within the last twelve months, intended as a reward or token of appreciation for or because of an official act performed by the public official."

Violations may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor, or by an administrative fine of up to $500 per violation, according to the draft ordinance.

a post on the Supreme Court's website notes that the "question came to the court in the case of James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Ind., who was convicted and sentenced to 21 months in prison for violating the federal law at the center of the case."

Snyder received $13,000 in 2014 from a truck company that had recently received contracts totaling more than $1 million for new trash trucks for the city, the website post said.

"Snyder maintains that the payment was for consulting services, but federal prosecutors called it an illegal gratuity," the post noted.