Best mugshot ever
For the past two and a half years, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has declined to sue hundreds of candidates and elected officials who altogether owe more than $700,000 to the state in unpaid fines for campaign reporting violations.
Campaign finance laws are meant to give the public insight into politicians’ possible influences and allow voters make informed decisions and hold officeholders accountable.
The Texas Ethics Commission levies the fines against candidates and elected officials who, for example, fail to file reports on their campaign fundraising and spending in a timely manner. Other violations include filing inaccurate or incomplete reports, misusing campaign or public funds for personal benefit, or producing and distributing misleading political advertising.
The state has few restrictions on political spending by design, with the laws supported by Republican lawmakers who generally oppose government regulation. It’s one of only 11 states that put no limits on individual contributions to campaigns.
And the Texas Ethics Commission, the regulatory agency in charge of enforcing those laws, doesn’t have many tools at its disposal to go after scofflaws aside from letter notifications. Its last line of defense against delinquent filers is to refer their cases to the attorney general’s office.
“We have very few rules when it comes to campaign finance in Texas, and the few that we do have are not enforced, clearly,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a government watchdog group. “What’s the point of even having the rules?”
Refusing to collect the fines is the latest exhibit of the antagonistic relationship between Paxton and the Texas Ethics Commission. In recent years, Paxton’s office has questioned the constitutionality of the agency’s work, and though his office is charged with defending state agencies in court, he has declined to defend it against a still-ongoing suit filed by political allies of his who seek to gut the agency. The unusual move has cost the state over $1 million by forcing it to seek outside counsel.
[…]
Chase Untermeyer, former chair of the Texas Ethics Commission and former Republican state representative for a Houston district, said he was surprised to hear that no suits had been filed. The attorney general’s office always had a threshold dollar amount for filing suits, he said, but it never quit filing them altogether before Paxton. Untermeyer served on the commission from 2010 to 2017 and was chair from 2016 to 2017.
“In theory, I think the attorney general’s office should represent the ethics commission and carry out both the spirit and the letter of the law,” Untermeyer said, “but I recognize they have a limited staff and for very practical and perhaps financial reasons, they may limit or put a floor on the amount of times they consider enforcement.”
Many times, he said, the only option left to the agency is the “naming and shaming” delinquent filers on a publicly available list on its website. As of last month, the list showed nearly 500 people owed fines that summed more than $2 million.
The halt of collections cases comes after the office filed 36 suits in 2019 and 15 in 2018, agency records show.
Democrat Rochelle Garza, Paxton’s opponent as he seeks re-election, said in a statement to Hearst Newspapers that this is “just another example of Ken Paxton’s impotent use of his office.”
“Paxton cares more about his extremist agenda than doing his job and bringing accountability to our electoral system,” she said. “I will bring back integrity and accountability to our government. There will be no more free passes for bad actors under my administration.”
The irony, as the story notes, is that the two biggest fine-owers right now are both Democrats – Rep. Ron Reynolds, and a Dallas County judge. Among many other things, this particular failure by Paxton – which, again, is a choice and not an error – would give Rochelle Garza a prime opportunity right out of the box if she wins to show how a non-partisan law-abiding Attorney General would operate. Imagine that for a minute. Such a simple lesson, not putting a crook in charge of enforcing the law.
It is quite a list of scofflaws:
Lawrence Allen
Harold Dutton
Jessica Farrar
Pete Gallego
Morris Overstreet
Kathie Stone among the Democrats whose names I recognized
as well as
R. W. Bray
Tex Christopher
William Booher
Marsha Farney
Charlie Howard’s estate
Rebecca Huddle
Mary Huls
Claver Kamau-Imani
Don Large
Matthew Mackowiak
David Medina
Demetria Smith who I recall from GOP or city contests in recent years