Laine, Ganguly to see no penalties for ethics violations over election filings

The Ethics Review Commission found that two candidates in last year’s City Council elections violated the city’s financial disclosure requirements, but commissioners opted to not pursue penalties for either infraction.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the commission held final hearings for two similar cases: a complaint filed by new District 10 Council Member Marc Duchen against his opponent Ashika Ganguly and another filed by former Council Member Mackenzie Kelly against Krista Laine, who won the race for the District 6 seat in November.

Both complaints charged the first-time candidates with failing to file a personal financial statement by late August as required by section 2-7-74 of the city code.

They were two of the 13 nonincumbent candidates found to have not filed the statements in a timely fashion.

In each case, Laine and Ganguly accepted responsibility for missing the deadline and filing the paperwork shortly after they were made aware of the violation. In separate statements to the commission, both said they would accept whatever punishment the commission opted to pursue and said their respective violations were the result of unfamiliarity with the city’s disclosure requirements for candidates.

They also questioned the effectiveness of those actions in realizing many of the commissioners’ stated goals of increasing candidates’ compliance with the city’s election laws. The maximum penalty for the violations would have been a class C misdemeanor.

“I believe that recommendations from this commission making it clearer to first-time candidates, new candidates, of the rules and procedures in place when running for office could be very helpful,” Ganguly said. “A sanction of someone who ran for office and lost is not going to teach future candidates necessarily about how to be successful in their future campaigns. Instead engaging in capacity-building strategies, engaging in ways to strengthen the system in place so that future candidates understand when things are due, what forms are part of the process.”

Laine said the city’s differing reporting schedules and notification process for incumbents and nonincumbents likely played a part in the large failure of nonincumbents to file the proper paperwork on time.

“I am no outlier. Nineteen nonincumbent candidates ran for City Council or mayor. Twelve of them missed both of the deadlines that have been referenced during this hearing. That’s greater than 60 percent failure rate. Incumbent Council members such as the complainant had a 100 percent success rate,” she said. “(Incumbents) receive notifications while they’re in office about upcoming deadlines. No candidates who are not in office have that benefit. Another, they are on a different deadline cycle. Their reports are due much earlier than when ours came up. That’s a big difference and it seems to have made a big difference in the success rate.”

The commission found violations fairly quickly in both cases, but spent the majority of its deliberation time discussing whether to assess a penalty to either candidate. A $300 fine was discussed briefly. Ganguly’s case was considered first, and the commission discussed asking her to draft a testimonial about her experience with the city’s campaign process, with the expectation that the commission could use her input in pursuing changes to city policies in the future.

Attorney Bill Aleshire, who represented both complainants, said the commission’s findings and any resulting penalties could have helped to push the city attorney’s office to become more aggressive in enforcing local election requirements.

“There is a problem out there with candidates, even today, candidates who ran for office and still haven’t filed the financial disclosure that was required. The reason that is occurring is because it is not being enforced,” he said. “You have only limited authority to do anything. And as I read to you under 2-7-74, I encourage you to take action, to start making it clear to every candidate that if you do not file your financial statement on time, you will be referred to the city attorney for prosecution.”

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