Dollops of Dough From PACs, but What About Public Service?

In the graph of PAC fund contributors (“Top Orange County PACs,” May 5), it is interesting that you place the Firefighters Local 1014 union as the top money PAC contributor in Orange County.

The average person does not read these articles in depth, so some facts go unnoticed, such as the fact that Local 1014 of the International AFL-CIO was originally chartered to serve the County of Los Angeles Fire Department, and only in recent years has it spread its wings to help the small unrepresented departments, such as Anaheim’s, and other small cities that were represented in contract negotiations by private firms or by individuals chosen from those memberships.

Local 1014 is covering firefighters in a huge area by land measure, and this takes in several small cities within Los Angeles County, as well as a few Orange County cities. Your article makes it seem as if the Orange County firefighters spend all their time collecting money for politics, when in fact the firefighters of Orange County probably are way down on the list of PAC fund contributors.

ANDREW D. KULJIS, Anaheim