An Inglewood resident has filed a complaint with California’s political watchdog alleging Mayor James T. Butts Jr. violated the state’s “pay-to-play” laws by accepting a $25,000 campaign donation from an advertising company just eight days before the City Council approved a long-term lease to place digital billboards around SoFi Stadium and the Los Angeles Clippers’ arena.
Butts received the donation from All-Star Media and its CEO, Dave Starensier, on April 7, 2025, according to a campaign filing attached to the complaint to the Fair Political Practices Commission. The City Council then approved an up to 40-year lease agreement with the billboard company WOW Media Inc. on April 15, 2025, that allowed WOW to set up digital signage and kiosks on medians and other public spaces.
All-Star and WOW have significant overlaps, the complaint alleges.
Starensier, the president and CEO of All-Star Media, is described as WOW’s “senior VP of sales & marketing,” the “dealer” and “our go-to man for all things client services,” on WOW’s website.
He previously marketed WOW’s older billboards in Inglewood, approved in an earlier vote, to prospective clients using an All-Star email address, according to a 2017 presentation.
Every person on the “About” page on All-Star’s website is also listed as a team member on WOW’s website — sometimes with the exact same headshot — including a content manager, a sales coordinator and an assistant sales coordinator.
Starensier could not be reached for comment. All-Star is registered in Colorado at the address of a $6.7 million home and received a contract for advertising at the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport in 2024, according to Zillow and public records.
Leonard Redway, who serves on Inglewood’s Construction Appeals Board and previously ran for City Council in 2022, filed the complaint with the FPPC this month because he felt the contribution “seemed very fishy” and warranted an independent investigation.
It could end up being legal, he said, but “it seems awfully strange to take a donation eight days before you vote on something so big.”
Butts, in a brief interview, said he checked with his campaign treasurer to verify he did not receive any campaign contributions from WOW during the period in question. “WOW did not contribute to me,” he said.
He would not address the allegations related to All-Star Media, saying only that he had no knowledge of the complaint.
Inglewood capped its contribution limits at $100,000, one of the highest in the state, in 2020.
California’s “pay-to-play” law, or the Levine Act, prohibits a party seeking a contract from contributing more than $500 to an official within 12 months of a decision. It also prohibits the official who accepted the contribution from taking part in the decision unless he or she returns the money.
While WOW would be the “party,” the law also extends to anyone who is paid to try to influence the decision one way or another.
Someone with a financial interest in the outcome could potentially trigger the Levine Act by simply sending an email, making a phone call or speaking during public comment, said Sean McMorris, the transparency, ethics and accountability program manager at California Common Cause, the nonpartisan organization that pushed for the 2022 legislation that expanded the Levine Act.
“It seems to me like this is a red flag that, at minimum, needs to be looked at carefully,” McMorris said. “Regardless of whether the FPPC determines this is a violation or not, the perception and optics are not good.”
The FPPC can levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation, McMorris said. It could also refer the case to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for potential criminal charges and stiffer fines.
In a statement, WOW accused the billionaire owners of SoFi Stadium and the Intuit Dome of orchestrating the complaint in the latest attempt to “undermine Inglewood’s revenues and secure greater control over the City’s advertising and revenue-generation landscape.”
“All Star Media is a completely separate company with no shared ownership, equity or corporate control with WOW Media Inc.,” the statement from WOW reads. “All Star operates as an independent third-party sales broker (also representing multiple out-of-home networks other than WOW) and has no involvement in WOW’s Transportation Information Network lease beyond providing whatever services may be requested by WOW of All Star as a third party broker in relation to the kiosks.”
Any political contribution from All Star “was made independently by All Star,” according to the statement.
The fighting over WOW’s billboards has created an ongoing feud between City Hall and the owners of its largest venues.
Last year, SoFi, the Intuit Dome and The Kia Forum sued to try to void the WOW billboard agreement on the grounds that the city had failed to comply with competitive bidding laws and did not have the authority to grant exclusive, long-term use of public rights-of-way to a private party.
A judge rejected the majority of their arguments earlier this month and reassigned the remainder of the lawsuit — which argued the billboards violated agreements between the city and the owners of Intuit and the Forum — to another court to decide.
If Inglewood had competitively bid the lease, it would have been exempt from the Levine Act.
Hollywood Park, the development that is home to SoFi Stadium, is funding a ballot initiative filed by Neighbors for Beautiful Inglewood that, if approved by voters, would prohibit “off-site” advertising kiosks and billboards on public space from displaying nearly all “commercially sponsored advertisements.” It would effectively shut down WOW Media’s billboards while exempting the billboards on the private properties of the city’s sports and entertainment venues.
“The media should look beyond the surface of this complaint and recognize the broader stadium‑funded proxy campaign behind it,” WOW’s statement reads.
Redway is openly supporting the billboard initiative and others that have rankled City Hall in recent months.
“We don’t want to drive down our streets and just have all of this advertisement pollution,” Redway said. “We’re not Las Vegas.”