Where did the money go?

That’s a key unanswered question in the saga of Contra Costa District Attorney Mark Peterson’s illegal use of $66,372 in campaign funds.

The voters of Contra Costa deserve answers, especially now that Peterson has refused to resign and announced he will seek re-election. They deserve to know exactly how he used contributions that were supposed to fund his campaign.

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Editorial: Contra Costa district attorney should resign The law-breaking by the county’s top law-enforcement official was egregious. Peterson admitted violating a state campaign finance law designed to prevent conversion of political donations into bribery.

“It’s not your personal piggy bank to pay whatever bills you have,” says Mark Morodomi, enforcement attorney for the state Fair Political Practices Commission from 1990-2000.

“If politicians can dip into their campaign funds for their personal expenses, what’s the difference between that and people just giving them money?”

The FFPC investigation of Peterson, released in December, found that from 2011-15 the district attorney tapped his campaign bank account for approximately 600 personal expenditures.

Peterson withdrew cash from the campaign account. He transferred funds directly from the campaign account to his personal bank account.

And, according to the FPPC, he used the campaign debit card for expenditures that included “personal items such as meals at restaurants, gasoline, clothing, movie tickets, hotel rooms, cellular telephone bills, etc.”

But that’s all we know. The commission fined Peterson an unusually large $45,000 but failed to require that he publicly disclose where he illegally spent campaign money.

And the FPPC says it cannot legally release information gleaned through its investigation. If the commission is right, state legislators should change the law. What good are disclosure rules if the details of violations are kept secret?

Of course, Peterson could — and should — release the details on his own. But he has ignored our request for information.

Consequently, we don’t know how much he withdrew in cash, how much he transferred straight into his personal account and how much he spent using the campaign debit card.

We don’t know how much went to pay bills, how much funded personal travel or how much went for fancy clothes and fine restaurants.

The public deserves to know whether he used the money for survival items such as groceries, like many welfare abusers he prosecutes, or, worse, to bolster his lifestyle.

Just as context matters when a judge metes out sentences, voters deserve to know the Peterson details before the next election.

And residents of Contra Costa deserve justice. Although the FPPC fined Peterson, he has kept his office and avoided criminal charges.

The county grand jury, employing a rarely used state law, has filed an accusation that Peterson’s misconduct warrants removal from office. The attorney general’s office will prosecute the case. Peterson is scheduled to appear in court June 14.

But thus far, the State Bar, which has received complaints, has not acted. And state Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed no criminal action, even though Peterson’s admitted violation of law could be prosecuted as a misdemeanor.

In other words, Peterson has skated with a fine and apology, and no criminal record — a deal that Public Defender Robin Lipetzky says her clients with similar offenses would gladly take.

Peterson claimed he considered the money a loan, but he paid back more than half of it only after his campaign was selected for a state audit and he realized he was going to get caught.

He never reported the loans on his campaign statements, which, with his signature, he certified under penalty of perjury were true and correct. They weren’t.

But, as a condition of the fine settlement with Peterson, the FPPC failed to insist he correct his campaign statements.

“The commission should have required him to report all expenditures of $100 or more paid for by the campaign committee,” says Bob Stern, who served as the FPPC’s first general counsel and co-authored the law Peterson violated.

Commission attorney Hyla Wagner argues that Peterson doesn’t have to report the expenditures because the money wasn’t used for political purposes.

In other words, according to her reasoning, if you break the law you don’t have to disclose how you spent donors’ money. Where’s the logic in that?

The FPPC, the agency for campaign transparency, has become party to the cover-up.