RECENT LOBBYING, ETHICS & CAMPAIGN FINANCE UPDATES
We read the news, cut through the noise and provide you the notes.
Welcome to Compliance Notes from Nossaman's Government Relations & Regulation Group – a periodic digest of the headlines, statutory and regulatory changes and court cases involving campaign finance, lobbying compliance, election law and government ethics issues at the federal, state and local level.
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Campaign Finance & Lobbying Compliance
A political action committee–run by the wife of Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump's last chief of staff–plans to close and faces a nearly $10,000 fine over accusations of violating federal election law. Right WomenPAC is facing a $9,500 fine over a particular 48-hour report it failed to file in 2022 that would have alerted the public that the PAC had spent more than $191,871 on an ad supporting former Rep. Stella Yvette Herrell, a Republican from New Mexico, in her reelection bid against Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat. Federal law requires a committee spending more than $10,000, 20 days or more before an election, to file a 48-hour expense report. However, the Right Women PAC did not file a 48-hour report to the FEC for its September 7, 2022, expenditure until after the November election. In FEC documents, representatives of the PAC said the failure to file the report was because of administrative error and that they filed the report as soon as FEC notified them of the mistake. The PAC agreed to pay $9,500 by Monday, June 3, 2024. It is not yet clear whether the payment has been made. (Danielle Battaglia, Raleigh News & Observer)
Government Ethics & Transparency
Louisiana: Louisiana lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to give Gov. Jeff Landry control over the Louisiana Board of Ethics just a few months after its members charged him with breaking a state ethics law. Under current law, leaders from Louisiana's private universities and colleges nominate five people for each of the 11 seats on the ethics board, and then the governor and state lawmakers pick their appointees from those lists. The governor gets to pick seven members, and state lawmakers select four. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Blake Miguez (R-New Iberia), would remove the private university and college presidents from the process. Under every version of the bill so far, the governor and legislative leaders get to pick the ethics members on their own. The bill must return to the Senate for at least one more vote before going to Landry's desk. ( Julie O'Donoghue,Louisiana Illuminator)
Pennsylvania: Former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon's bid to overturn his 2021 bribery conviction fell short Wednesday, as a federal appeals court rejected his contention that prosecutors had failed to fully prove their case. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found jurors had been presented with enough evidence to conclude that the councilmember sold the powers of his office to labor leader John Dougherty in exchange for a $70,000-a-year salary from his politically powerful union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Though the councilmember argued that the government should have been required to prove that he and Dougherty had an explicit agreement that Henon would use the powers of his office to benefit Local 98 in exchange for those paychecks, the appellate court disagreed; an implicit understanding was enough. Henon remains incarcerated at a federal detention center in Lewisburg, Pa., where he is serving a 3½-year sentence. (Jeremy Roebuck and Oona Goodin-Smith,The Philadelphia Inquirer)
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