Getting a Piece of the Action : Contributions: Company committees give employees a chance to participate in campaigns.

Good government, good management and good business--those are just a few of the reasons that corporate executives say they form political action committees.

By using PACs, company employees get the chance to participate in local, state or federal campaigns, maximizing their impact by pooling their small contributions into bigger, more politically meaningful ones. Firms with many branch offices avoid the hassle of multiple contributions coming from various arms of the same company. And company accountants can get a clearer picture of where the money is going if it all comes out of one checking account.

“We have set up a number of PACs for companies who have different divisions, different subsidiaries,” said Dana Reed, a Costa Mesa lawyer who specializes in campaign law.

Company PACs have their foes, however, especially in regard to their participation in Orange County politics. Whereas supervisors who receive individual or corporate contributions of more than $1,944 in four years have to abstain from matters affecting those contributors, PACs do not trigger that law since PACs do not bring matters to the board for approval.

That’s a peculiar wrinkle in Orange County. The laws that govern state agencies, however, take a different approach.

For instance: Contributions by the Southern California Edison Co. PAC--its full name is the Citizenship Responsibility Group for Employees of Southern California Edison Co.--to members of the State Board of Equalization are considered exactly the same as contributions from the company. The equalization board regulates and administers a variety of state taxes that affect companies and individuals.

In contrast, the loophole in the Orange County law gives supervisors a special incentive to court PAC money because those contributions never require board members to abstain from voting.

But representatives of several firms with their own PACs said neither the Orange County law nor its loophole is the reason they formed committees or the reason that they contribute to supervisors’ races.

Many company PACs were established, in fact, because federal law bars candidates for Congress and the presidency from receiving corporate contributions. For companies eager to participate in federal races, then, PACs are the only option.

“On the federal side, we can’t give corporate money” except through PACs, said Ken Stewart, senior counsel for Southern California Edison Co. “If we’re going to give at all, it has to be our employees contributing through the PAC.”

To fund the company PAC, most employers give their workers an option. They can either contribute directly or through a monthly payroll deduction. Typical employee contributions are modest--$20 a month is roughly tops at the Edison Co., Stewart said.

In addition to its state PAC, which is the same one that contributes to local races, Southern California Edison operates a federal committee for congressional and presidential candidates. The federal PAC does not contribute locally, and the local PAC steers clear of federal races.

Likewise, the Irvine Co. PAC, known as ICEPAC, limits its contributions to federal races. The only time its contributions have intersected with county politics was in 1988, when it donated $2,500 to Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, then a candidate for Congress.

“I’m a member of ICEPAC,” said Michael Stockstill, a spokesman for the Irvine Co. “Every month I have a certain amount of money withdrawn from my paycheck and it goes there.”

Given that money to work with, a committee of company employees usually makes the decisions as to who should get their PAC contributions. Most firms say their PACs do not go out looking for candidates to support; instead, the candidates come to them.

The committee then takes the request under consideration and decides whether it cares to back the candidate. The company’s board of directors is not part of that decision, which is what gives the PAC its legal independence from its sponsoring company.

That process, say its defenders, helps both candidate and contributor. Each learns something about the other, and the end result is that politicians know more about companies that are active in their communities at the same time that company workers get the chance to size up candidates.

“This company has a long, long record of being very active in civic and charitable activity,” said Rick Sherman, senior vice president of the William Lyon Co., which has a company PAC. “The PAC is just an extension of that.”