SLO County supervisor received donations from property owner. Can he vote on Bob Jones Trail?
The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors has officially shifted gears on the Bob Jones Trail expansion project and is moving forward with a new design — but this is not the county's preferred scenario.
The change came after an eminent domain procedure to seize a slice of Ray Bunnell's property failed when Supervisor Debbie Arnold voted against the move and Supervisor John Peschong recused himself on multiple occasions because he accepted campaign donations from Bunnell.
Now, some community members think Peschong intentionally accepted the donations to avoid voting on the trail.
"The North County supervisors are holding out their votes to uphold an ideology at the expense of the safety of county residents outside of their districts," Friends of the Bob Jones Trail president Helene Finger told The Tribune.
Peschong's most recent recusal was on Oct. 29 during the board's vote for a new trail design .
Originally, he was legally required to recuse himself from voting on the trail. But now, more than a year after Bunnell's most recent donation, Peschong is recusing by choice.
The original trail design would have clipped property owned by Bunnell, requiring the county to purchase an easement for about an acre of his land, but Bunnell refused to sell.
"I don't want any hint of impropriety," Peschong said. "So I've just removed myself from the discussion."
The Tribune looked into Peschong's recusals as a part of its Reality Check series.
State law permits Peschong to vote on Bob Jones Trail
Senate Bill 1439 prohibits local elected officials like county supervisors from accepting donations larger than $250 from any party involved in a license, permit or entitlement proceeding.
This law went into effect in January 2023. In 2025, the regulated donation limit will increase to $500.
If an official accidentally accepts a donation, they can return the funds within 30 days and still vote on the project. If the official fails to return the donation, they cannot vote on the matter for one year , according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
Peschong announced his 2024 re-election campaign in May 2023.
Including a donation from his construction company, Bunnell has contributed $2,750 to Peschong's re-election campaigns as of Thursday, according to county campaign finance disclosures.
Peschong first accepted a $500 donation from Bunnell in 2020, according to campaign finance reports.
Peschong's most recent re-election campaign accepted three donations from Bunnell. The property owner donated $1,000 on May 4, 2023, $250 on Aug. 3, 2023, and $500 on Sept. 27, 2023, according to campaign finance reports.
Additionally, Bunnell Construction gave a $500 donation to Peschong's campaign on June 29, 2023.
Peschong said he didn't know about the donations until 30 days had passed.
Leading up to the November 2024 election, committees fundraising for candidates had to meet four deadlines to report campaign donations lower than $1,000, first on Jan. 25, then on Jan. 31, once more on Feb. 22 and finally on July 31, according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission .
Because the reporting period was months after Bunnell made his contributions, Peschong said he didn't see the donations in time to return them.
"I was collecting a lot of donations at the time, and I actually didn't see," he said, noting that his campaign treasurer was based in Sacramento. "If I caught it, I would've returned it."
In fact, Peschong said he didn't learn about the donations until the Tribune pointed them out.
"I went back and looked at the reports, and then I recused myself," he said.
The Tribune originally reported on the donations on Sept. 30, 2023 — only three days after the final $500 donation Peschong received from Bunnell on Sept. 27, 2023. Though this was within the 30-day time limit, he did not return the donation.
This is because he still did not know about the September donation until months later, Peschong said.
As required by law, Peschong's treasurer produced one finance report in July covering donations from January to June 2023, and another in January of 2024 covering July to December 2023.
As a result, Peschong learned of Bunnell's May and June 2023 donations in his July 2023 finance report, and did not learn about the August and September 2023 donations until January 2024.
Even though he learned about the June 29, 2023, donation from Bunnell just days later in the July 2023 report, 30 days had already passed since Bunnell's donation that May — so Peschong thought that returning the June donation would've been pointless, he said.
Peschong first abstained from a vote on the Bob Jones Trail at a meeting on Aug. 22, 2023, after he had learned about Bunnell's donations.
At that meeting, the board voted to hire a consulting group to produce design plans for the Bob Jones Trail. The action did not affect Bunnell's property, but Peschong abstained from the vote because other board members briefly discussed eminent domain after the presentation.
Peschong then recused himself from a board vote on the Bob Jones Trail for the first time at a meeting on Nov. 7, 2023.
When a board member recuses themselves from a vote, they remove themselves from a conversation entirely. In this case, Peschong cited a conflict of interest and left the room. When he abstained from the August vote, however, he remained present during the conversation, but did not participate in the vote.
According to court documents , the county was considering using eminent domain to obtain the easement on Bunnell's land as early as June 2021.
Peschong said he assumed the board pursuing eminent domain was "always a possibility," but did not plan to support a vote to use it on Bunnell's land.
In 2023, after his first recusal, Peschong said that he wouldn't support using eminent domain even if he could vote. He only supports using the eminent domain process for "issues of public safety," he told The Tribune again this week.
When asked about his opinion on the project now, which many consider a matter of public safety, he said he had no comment on anything relating to the project.
"I'm just out of it," Peschong said.
The project failed an eminent domain vote in August, with Peschong recusing himself from the decision and Arnold voting against it.
Peschong was eligible to vote on the project again on Oct. 28, but he still recused himself from the next day's vote on the trail.
"San Luis Obispo County allows you to recuse yourself on issues if there's even a hint of conflict, and so that's what I'm going to continue to do," he said. "I just think it's probably best that I just recuse myself on all those votes so it doesn't come across as, you know, I have a conflict of interest."
County code allows the supervisors to recuse themselves from voting on a matter "based on a perceived conflict of interest," county counsel Rita Neal wrote in an email to The Tribune.
Peschong will continue to recuse himself from any future votes on the item, he said.
When asked if he is intentionally taking the donations so that he doesn't have to vote on issues pertaining to the trail, Peschong said that he "doesn't have any response to that."
"I'm following the law, and now that we've gone beyond the one year, I've decided, because of the possible appearance of a conflict, I'm removing myself from the whole question," Peschong said.
Why is Bunnell donating to Peschong's campaigns?
Bunnell owns land along the proposed pathway of the Bob Jones Trail in District 3 but has donated nearly $3,000 to Peschong, who represents District 1.
This begs the question: Why did the land owner contribute so much money to a candidate he is not even a constituent of?
Peschong said he doesn't know why Bunnell donated to his campaigns, nor was he aware of the donations until after the 30-day reversal period.
The supervisor said he last spoke with Bunnell about eight years ago, well before the landowner's first donation to Peschong.
"I went over anyway and talked to him, and he just said, 'I don't want to do this,'" Peschong said. "It's probably one of the shortest meetings I've ever had."
Edwin Rambuski, Bunnell's longtime lawyer, told The Tribune his Republican client's donations reflected his politics and were nothing nefarious.
"Mr. Bunnell, like all voters registered in SLO County, has the right to make campaign contributions to candidates of their choosing," Rambuski said.
Peschong, with a background in the Reagan administration and a former head of the SLO County Republican Party, said that he is "obviously the most political person on the Board of Supervisors."
Bunnell also donated $500 to Supervisor Debbie Arnold, the only other Republican supervisor on board, during her 2020 campaign for re-election, according to county campaign finance disclosures. Arnold did not run for re-election in 2024.
Leading up to the November 2022 election, Bunnell donated $2,000 to Bruce Jones , the Republican who challenged incumbent Supervisor Bruce Gibson.
"You will discover that Mr. Bunnell has exercised his political voice, which is his right, and made very modest donations to various local campaigns," Rambuski said.
