Mushroom treatment over at state board of elections?
Dan Kane is at it again – doing what he does best:
Two years ago, the State Board of Elections asked a state prosecutor to evaluate whether criminal charges should be brought for suspect campaign contributions connected to Mako Medical CEO Chad Price.
The board found six donations made from his credit card that were listed as coming from a business associate and family members, the prosecutor said. North Carolina law forbids anyone making political contributions anonymously in the name of another. It also bars candidates, political parties and others from receiving such money. A public hearing could have tracked the money trail in the open, and addressed several other campaign finance transactions linked to Price, including contributions made in the name of a sister with severe developmental disability.
A hearing could have also shed light on a donation filed on behalf of a woman who shared Price’s last name but denied giving money, and another from a man named as a donor who did not exist. But no hearing happened. And the prosecutor quietly ended the matter a year after receiving the referral.
State lawmakers put an end to the hearings with legislation passed in 2018. They funneled campaign finance investigations into a new, secret and longer process. In the six years since the law passed, not a single campaign finance charge has been filed by a North Carolina state prosecutor, state election officials and campaign watchdogs say.
In the six years prior, election board hearings on complaint donation complaints were steps to criminal convictions against two state lawmakers.
Supporters of the campaign finance law say the lack of charges does not necessarily indicate a problem.
“Maybe nobody did anything that results in charges being warranted,” said state Senate Leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican.
But not all informed observers see it the same way. “For the public — all of us — we’re the loser,” said Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, a nonprofit that helped pass election reforms nearly 20 years earlier after campaign finance scandals.
A history of big revelations
The North Carolina election board held hearings in past years when their investigators found potential criminal conduct.
Those hearings produced dramatically revealing moments, including these four that played a role in criminal charges: In 2018, the board found state Rep. Rodney Moore, a Charlotte Democrat, failed to report more than $141,000 in campaign contributions and expenditures from 2010. Moore in 2019 pleaded guilty in state court to one felony count of making false statements under oath and received a year of probation.
In 2015, a board investigator detailed more than $100,000 in campaign money that state Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, a Concord Republican, spent on family meals, personal vehicle expenses and speeding ticket costs. He was sentenced in 2017 to eight months in prison on federal charges of mail fraud and filing false tax returns.
In 2009, a fundraiser who flew Democrat Gov. Mike Easley around the state told the board the governor’s campaign gave him $11,000 for roof and bathroom repairs at the governor’s personal residence in Raleigh. Easley pleaded guilty in 2010 to a state felony charge of certifying a false campaign report and was fined $1,000.
In 2006, House Speaker Jim Black, a Matthews Democrat, was forced to admit that he filled in three blank checks totaling $4,200 with the name of a lawmaker whose political party change helped keep him in power. Black, the following year, received a sentence of five years and three months on a federal public corruption charge. It was a process that drew praise from watchdog organizations and helped instill confidence in state government
Complaints do get filed. Some of the only data the elections board shares about campaign donation complaints is their number. That included 48 in 2022, nearly double the 25 filed in 2020. In the 11 months so far this year, 24 complaints were filed, the board said. Election board staff say a 2018 state law forbids them from making public any details of campaign finance complaint cases today, regardless of an investigation’s outcome.
They do notify people who submit complaints and those accused if the board finds no violations. But neither is notified when the board forwards the complaint to a district attorney, said Lindsey Wakely, the board’s deputy general counsel. “We read the change in the law to limit what can now be shared by the agency, because it’s not merely ‘not a public record.’ It’s confidential,” she said.
Prior to the 2018 law, the board would release complaints and election records associated with them public, until it found possible criminal conduct, said Gary Bartlett, the board’s executive director from 1993 to 2013. “Whenever there was a filed complaint, everything was open record until there was evidence that a criminal violation may have occurred, and then we did not provide any more information until the hearing of the State Board of Elections,” Bartlett said.
Unknown: Evidence collected after complaints
Beyond the Mako case, details from three other substantial campaign donation complaints have been made public since the 2018 law went into effect. Bob Hall, the retired executive director of Democracy North Carolina, filed all three and shared the complaints.
But the election board has cited the 2018 law when declining to provide status reports on the complaints, he said, adding: “These things just drop into a mystery box.” Secrecy isn’t the only issue. If election board members find evidence of a criminal violation, the 2018 law requires them to send their findings to the State Ethics Commission for a review that can take up to 90 days. The commission then can agree or disagree with the board’s recommendation on whether criminal charges may be merited. The ethics commission’s findings are secret too under the 2018 law. The 2018 law for the first time also put board campaign donation investigations on a timer.
It now has a four-year window to investigate violations once it becomes aware of them, even though North Carolina has no statute of limitations on felony criminal charges. […]
At the time they passed the secrecy provision that now cloaks so much about campaign finance complaints and investigations, Republican lawmakers said making public unproven campaign finance violation allegations was not fair. To get changes into law, they stripped a bill focused on transportation laws that had passed both chambers in different versions, and inserted wide-ranging language that reconfigured the elections and ethics boards among several other things. That “gut-and-amend” tactic, as it’s commonly called, meant legislators could not amend the bill or discuss it in a specialized committee. They could only vote for or against the bill. Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed it, citing the new secrecy.
Republican lawmakers — who overrode his veto with the help of one Democrat in each chamber — said at the time they couldn’t trust an election board with a Democrat majority. State Sen. Ralph Hise, a Mitchell County Republican, said his campaign was subjected to an unnecessary investigation over bookkeeping errors because of complaints by a Democratic campaign finance researcher. Hise paid a fine and restitution.
“This is about someone creating a violation for political purposes,” Hise told his colleagues during debate on the legislation.
During votes on the bill, Senate leader Berger said results of board investigations would become public despite the new rules. “The only confidentiality is if a charge is made, if someone files a complaint, that’s the confidentiality,” Berger said then. “If the board makes an investigation, if they find something, the information is perfectly legitimate and ought to be released.”
When asked in October about the distance between what he said would happen and what is happening, Berger questioned whether the board was correctly interpreting the level of secrecy in the 2018 law. He did not offer to resolve the differing interpretations. […]
