It appears Longmont City Council at-large candidate
Kaye Fissinger has learned a trick from her fellow travelers in the White House: dump bad news late on Friday to avoid the news cycle. Nice try, but no such luck.
It appears that Ms. Fissinger, or whoever is filing her reports, made a few boo-boos on their initial campaign report on October 13th (
you can see it here). In what basically was
an admission of guilt (several times over), she made an amended report on Friday October 16th (
which can be seen here). Didn't hear about it? Well, now you have. And I'm sure the Election Committee when they meet on Monday October 19th to look over campaign reports will see these mistakes.
The rumor mill
A couple of months back there was this rumor going around about two candidates in particular getting shady under the table contributions from outside organizations. Those two candidates were
Karen Benker and
Kaye Fissinger, the organizations were
MoveOn.Org and
ProgressNow (or
ThinkProgress).After seeing the initial campaign reports, those rumors appeared to be just that, rumors. But Ms. Fissinger's amended report re-opens the possibility these rumors were true.
It's expensive to violate the LFCPA
Something that wasn't reported in the initial report were three so-called loans Ms. Fissinger made to herself. The dates and amounts of these loans were: 8/20/09
$579.35, 9/4/09
$231, 10/9/09
$94.54 - totaling
$904.89. As you can clearly see, these were all made before the 10/13/09 reporting date. If this money was received through some intermediary, like one of the organizations above, this would be what the Longmont Fair Campaigns Act (
LFCPA) classifies as a "
conduit". Section
2.204.211(C)4 of the LFCPA has a penalty for "acting as a conduit" at $400 for each violation. $400 x 3 =
$1,200 fine.
But let's say it was an honest mistake in reporting, that there was no shady conduit-like contributions. Failing to file a contribution falls under
2.04.211(C)5, the penalty is $100/day for each violation. 3 violations x 3 days =
$900 fine.
What else was possibly violated?
2.04.207(A)1(c) was also violated for 3 days as the incorrect amounts were reported for total of contributions reported (loans), expenditures made (incorrectly denoted in original campaign report as "In-Kind Contributions), and balance of funds at end of reporting period (off by
$25.95). There are no specific fines for these types of mistakes entered on campaign reports, so
2.204.211(C)13 ("Any violation of this Act not otherwise set forth herein") may need to be applied, which is
$100. The Election Committee needs to determine how many of these "
not otherwise set" kinds of violations occurred. There are at least three violations in this area =
$300 fine.
Lastly,
2.04.204(G) (promissory note or report on a form filed with City Clerk for candidate loan to themselves) was also violated.
2.04.207(A)1 of the LFCPA states this shall be reported on the 21st day before the election. The penalty for not filing this report
2.204.211(C)1 is $400/day, 3 days elapsed before this report was made. The Election Committee needs to determine if this is three (3) separate reports (although they each have different dates as noted above) or one(1) report of three (3) loans. The total fine is either
$1,200 or
$400.
The
Longmont Fair Campaign Practices Act was amended to get this kind of shady campaign activity out of our local elections. It's ironic (but not really) that someone like Ms. Fissinger, who essentially screamed from the podium in favor of this ordinance, will probably be the first to be found in violation of it. By my math, there's the potential for
$3,600 in fines. Maybe it's time for a new round of "
loans".
As an aside, none of the above violations are part of the lawsuit or possible preliminary injunction of the LFCPA by the plaintiffs in the case (which includes myself). So even if the judge in this case grants us a preliminary injunction, the above possible violations can still be acted on from the Election Committee. The others brought forward by Karen Benker would be subject to the injunction as they pertain to Independent Expenditures.
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©2009 Chris Rodriguez/Longmont Advocate LLC (Chris Rodriguez is a Longmont resident, and the publisher and broadcaster of Longmont Advocate, a community website and podcast that raises local issues to increase public awareness and interest)