In the spirit of Sunshine Week, here?s a blog post by conservative political operative Keith Plunkett. In it, he details a rather serious lack of oversight by Senate President Pro Tem Terry Brown, whose campaign finance reports for the past several years are severely lacking.
Senator Brown has reported raising $119,750 and spending $88,854 from May 10, 2007, to the most recent filing deadline of January 31, 2013. Yet, he has provided no information in campaign finance reports of where he got the money or where he spent it. Think that is something the good folks in District 17 in Lowndes County may want to know?
Candidates are required to provide itemized reports of donations or receipts above $200, and an aggregate of that amount in donations or receipts to or from a person or entity during an election cycle. What Senator Brown is reporting is that he has never spent or received campaign money over the amount of $200 to or from anyone in the past 6 years.
How likely is that? Not very. Campaign signs alone run around five dollars a piece, and that doesn?t include ads in the local paper, bumper stickers and the myriad of other simple expenses. Are we also to believe that no one gave the Senator over $200 as a campaign donation?
Actually, Plunkett is wrong on one account. In reviewing Brown?s campaign finance reports, the senator did provide an accounting of contributions made to him.
However, Brown did not file a single itemized expense report for campaign finance activity in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 or 2012. I couldn?t find any reports for 2009 campaign contributions or expenditures.
This raises two questions:
- Why has Brown failed to file these reports?
- Why has the secretary of state failed to enforce the campaign finance laws in this matter?
The Associated Press has put together a series of articles on Sunshine Week, which looks at open record laws across the state. In an article looking at campaign finance laws for municipal elections. Municipal campaign finance reports are the responsibility of city clerks, who are then supposed to forward them to the secretary of state?s office.
?We do train the municipal clerks and emphasize that they shall forward the copies. All of that said, we do not receive all of the filings,? (Secretary of State Delbert) Hosemann said.
He said his office posts campaign finance reports online for officials elected on the state level, but it would be impractical to post reports for local officials. Local campaigns are often too small to warrant the expense of processing, verifying and posting all of the reports, he said.
It makes you wonder what good posting reports for state office candidates ? much less elected officials ? does if state law is not enforced. It?s a real oversight, and the lack of transparency should not be tolerated.
As a side note? I?m well aware of the fact that Plunkett served as communications director for former state Sen. Billy Hewes during the 2011 Republican primary for lieutenant governor. But Hewes and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves filed their reports as required. Any criticism of Brown on this issue is fair game, regardless who is making it.
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