The state recently socked Mayor Art Ward’s campaign with a $1,500 fine for breaking election laws during last year’s mayoral race.
The State Elections Enforcement Commission levied the fine – which has to be paid personally by Ward’s campaign treasurer – and ordered the campaign to return another $500 along with correcting its campaign spending and donation forms to comply with state statutes.
The state smackdown – the result of a complaint filed by the city Republican Party’s chairman – is one of the largest fines ever issued against a Bristol political campaign. It may be Bristol’s biggest ever.
“It’s just horrendous,” Ward said Monday. “This was politically motivated.”
Ward said there is “a difference between people sincerely trying to do the right thing” in a volunteer position and politicians trying to get away with something shady.
Filing a complaint for minor mistakes that led to a fine that only the treasurer can pay out of his own money is “dastardly,” Ward said.
The campaign’s disclosure forms failed to report the full names, addresses and occupations of donors, improperly paid out petty cash to some campaign workers and failed to specify what it was spending all of its money on.
The problem was that Ward’s campaign treasurer, former city Board of Finance member Robert Dunlap, “was not too well-versed in the procedures that are required to account for a candidate’s finances,” said Art Mocabee, the GOP chairman who filed the complaint.
Mocabee said the mistakes were flagrant and the paperwork “a mess.”
“Yeah, I screwed up, but it had nothing to do with the mayor,” Dunlap said. “I didn’t pay enough attention to the rules and regulations as I should have.”
Dunlap said the problems were “my fault, unintentional, unfortunate, and rather costly to me.”
“I’m not very happy about it,” he said, adding that it cost him his vacation this year.
Mocabee said he doesn’t blame Ward for the errors.
“It’s certainly not Art’s fault. He was probably just assuming Bob knew what he was doing,” Mocabee said.
He also called Dunlap “a great guy and a smart fellow” who just didn’t know the details of the laws governing the reports.
Mocabee said that the errors are “not anything too serious” in the big scheme of things, but they do allow critics to wonder, fairly, if Ward’s aides are “this haphazard” accounting for campaign dollars whether they’ll do any better with the public’s money.
“In an era where ethics is so important, the campaign financing reports cannot be taken lightly and they have to be scrutinized for the highest level of ethics possible,” Mocabee said.
He said the public wants to know for sure that public servants are held accountable.
“If you don’t make the grade, will you make the grade in more serious areas?” Mocabee asked.
The state panel determined – and Dunlap agreed – that nearly $5,000 in reimbursements from the campaign to Ward were not itemized to explain what the money was for. Subsequent filings clarified the spending.
The campaign also took in three donations directly from labor unions, two of them from the Bristol Police union. That’s not allowed, the state agency said, and ordered the money returned to the unions.
Mocabee said he viewed it as one of his jobs as the GOP’s city chairman to check the reports filed by Republican candidates “to make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
He said he looked over Ward’s filings “to make sure the other guys are doing the right thing.”
When he saw that they were not, Mocabee said, he filed the complaint with the state regulatory agency that monitors campaign finance disclosure.
Ward said that filing the complaint was “very cavalier” of Mocabee because he knew the stakes for Dunlap. He said that the GOP chairman should have just called Dunlap and asked him to correct the forms.
Ward said Mocabee “surely should be ashamed of himself.”
The mayor said that most of the campaign finance forms filed by municipal candidates in Bristol have mistakes that would lead to fines if anyone filed a complaint. But those involved in the process understand, he said, that volunteers who are not campaign professionals don’t always know exactly what’s required and they make allowances.
Ward said that if the state is going to be so stringent, fewer people will run for office and those who do will wind up having to pay professional campaign finance outfits to make sure the reports are done to the strict standards apparently required today.
He said state lawmakers should step in to prevent people such as Dunlap from getting socked personally for trivial errors.
“I can’t even describe how I feel about this whole situation,” said Ward.
“I’ll stand by my treasurer,” the mayor said. “I know that everything he did was done with the utmost of integrity.”
“I apologize to him for his efforts being paraded as if he purposefully created some errors,” Ward said. “That’s sad. It’s really sad.”
Click here for PDF of the full report from the Elections Enforcement Commission*******
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
