General:
The Committee in good faith and with best efforts tried to follow all the campaign finance rules.
The Committee volunteer treasurer attended an ethics commission
training session and routinely contacted the ethics commission
regarding issues and questions regarding the requirements and various
filings. The Committee's treasurer was meticulous in collecting the
required donor information. Any violation of law was completely unintentional.
We further note that the Candidate was a first-time candidate who was a
novice at running for office and that the treasurer was a volunteer and
first time treasurer of a campaign for public office.
Missing Donor Information:
General
In
connection with the donations subject to potential forfeiture, the
Committee would note that in fact it had all the required information
on hand for 17 of those donations and believe such donations should be
non-candidates for forfeiture. The Committee
will voluntarily agree to forfeit the funds received from the three
remaining donors for whom required information may not have been
properly on-hand.
System Problem Lead to Omitted Information which was on-hand.
The
Committee would like to note that in connection with our filings, most
particularly the Committee's second filing (Oct 1-15 2004 period), our
volunteer treasurer experienced significant difficulty with the City's
on-line system. The system was erratic and unreliable. The treasurer experienced situations where the system was unavailable when he could not log on. There were also situations when OLFS failed to save data, and failed to generate reports. We believe during this filing certain information which we had on-hand was somehow improperly saved and recorded.
We also note that during this period, the Committee treasurer conferred
many times with Sarah Lee Dang of the Ethics Commission, who among
other things, encouraged the Committee to make the filing in its then
current form rather than be late in filing of the form.
We believe that the
reason five donor names whose address information was in-complete on
the filing form and the two missing donors was due to these system
crashes and/or problems in saving such information on the City filing
system. The Committee had all such donor information on file.
For instance, the Committee notes that Mr. Pat Hines (whose address
information was missing on the filed form) was one of the most active
volunteers actually on the Committee and that Mr. Jeffrey Shorenstein
Hays (whose address was also missing on the filed form) has the same
home address as his wife, which the Committee accurately reported in
the same filing. Clearly, the Committee had the required information of
such donors.
PO Box as Home Mailing Address Lead to Confusion.
The Committee also
would note that it reported a number of donors home mailing address
with a PO Box since they lived in communities without street mailing
addresses or the PO Box was the preferred home mailing address of such
donor. Unfortunately, the Committee had the misunderstanding that these
home mailing addresses or preferred home mailing addresses were the
proper addresses to report. The Committee had
all these donors actual home street addresses available and again, all
such donors were actually friends or family members of the Candidate. For instance, Lisa Flood, who is the Candidate's sister in-law, lives in Wilson, Wyoming. Wilson
Wyoming does not have a street mailing addresses but only PO Boxes. In
fact, not only did the Committee have the actual street address
on-hand, the Candidate has visited her home many times in the past.
Occupation:
We also note that we
believe that the occupation of donors which we reported accurately
reflect information reported to the Committee and/or known to the
Candidate or Committee. For instance, our
filing reflected the information provided by Ms. Nancy Cutler (who was
also very active on the Committee) that she was self-employed and had
no employer.
Filing of Copy of Mass-mailing
The Committee prepared one flyer which was mass-mailed twice. The mailing brochure complied in all respects with all other election rules.
Unfortunately, the Committee believed, incorrectly, that the
Committee's professional consultant who coordinated the mailing of the
flyer was also going to make the proper filing relating to the mailings.
S:\AUDIT\2004-2005 Audit Pool\Committee to Elect Larry Kane\Candidate's response to report.doc