Columbus
Dispatch...
Brunner still owes
charities
By Darrel Rowland
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 03:07 AM
Even former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s own office questioned
her switch of computer equipment and other material from her old state
campaign to her unsuccessful 2010 run for the U.S. Senate.
To resolve the matter, her still-active Senate campaign was supposed to
give almost $15,000 - the value of the equipment - to charities of her
choice in exchange for the case’s being dropped.
But she has handed over only $4,000 and hasn’t paid a dime in more than
a year, Federal Election Commission records filed through last month
show. Those records show that her federal campaign kitty contained more
than $20,000 as of April 15.
The agreement - filed the day that Brunner left her state job in
January - with her office’s campaign-finance administrator, J. Curtis
Mayhew, did not set a deadline to pay the remaining $11,000.
“We’ve made arrangements with the Brunner campaign (for it) to make a
donation to charity in an amount equal to the value of the equipment,
which, from our perspective, will resolve the matter,” said Maggie
Ostrowski, spokeswoman for the current secretary of state, Republican
Jon Husted.
Brunner did not want to address the details of her situation. “As soon
as I can close up my campaign committee, I will, but there are campaign
obligations that will be met, and they’ll be met in good time,” she
said.
Last fall, Mayhew, who has served under both Republican and Democratic
secretaries of state, raised a question as part of an audit of
Brunner’s campaign to “clarify the disposition” of the computer
equipment from Brunner’s campaign for secretary of state. On Jan. 6,
the Brunner Senate campaign presented its plan to resolve the
controversy through the charitable contributions, which it had already
begun months before.
The next day, Mayhew told the Brunner campaign that its plan “should be
sufficient.”
Usually, using state campaign money to buy material for a federal
campaign is flat-out disallowed by FEC rules. But the path this
equipment followed was convoluted enough to generate a nondecision by
the commission when it investigated the transfer last year.
Brunner bought the $15,000 in equipment in January 2009 with money from
her campaign for secretary of state. But a few days later, she
dissolved that committee and formed a federal campaign committee for
U.S. Senate.
The brand-new equipment was “abandoned” at the “landlord” of her old
campaign’s headquarters - which was in the law offices of her husband,
Rick - and eventually wound up with her U.S. Senate effort. She lost in
last May’s Democratic primary to Lee Fisher, who was defeated by
Republican Rob Portman in November.
When The Dispatch raised questions about the unusual transfer in
mid-2009, the Brunner campaign said it had signed a secret agreement at
the time of the transfer several months earlier to make the charitable
contributions. That agreement was not made public.
Brunner’s campaign treasurer, Patrick Quinn, who is a law partner of
the Brunners, did not return calls yesterday seeking comment.
Read it at The Columbus Dispatch
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