Reporting on the Reports

Chron: 3 leading candidates give back illegal donations (Mike Snyder, Bradley Olson)

The Chron covers the campaign finance irregularities from the last batch filed by city candidates. The good news is that they give ample mention to the reports of Bradford and Khalid Khan, which have been covered in some depth by Martha, Kuff, and Slampo.

They add some balance by mentioning the Mayoral filings, which have some glitches, as well. I'll say for those reports, that the errors are more common and far less egregious than those posed by Bradford and (more significantly) by Khalid Khan. For one, the number of contributors to a campaign will magnify the problems of the "blackout contractor" donations and also those that go (within reason) above the maximum level. Generally, both are fairly small amounts, as they are with Locke and Parker. And it's not unusual to deal with them after the report is put together ... and even after they're turned in.

One additional point to make about Khan's unreported mail and his comment for this story:

Khan said he filed the affidavit because he was unable to get a password to file his report electronically from the city secretary's office on the day it was due. He said the mailing expenses were not reported because he had not been billed for them yet, although the law requires that expenses be reported when they are incurred.

As to the matter of Khalid Khan's ability to master basic email communication, I'll not concern myself with for now. But regarding the billing of six to eight pieces of political mail, I'll call that a flat-out lie. I seriously doubt that Spencer Neuman earned his million-dollar Bellaire estate by spending a minimum of $60,000 on clients to be billed later in the campaign. Beyond the story's point that expenditures are to be reported when they are incurred, I'll say again that no mail shop drops mail without a check in hand for postage. Printing and labor, they might carry. But not postage.

It would be interesting to see if Olson or Snyder were to follow this up with a call to Neumann and even ask for a copy of the invoices and checks to see if they match with Khan's story. If nothing else, I wonder how many of Neumann's other clients are suddenly curious about why they aren't getting free mail sent for them. Or even more to the point, shouldn't there be a binary situation here where, if Khan is telling the truth, then he's highlighting that Neumann would be in violation of campaign finance law? After all, Khan is essentially saying that Neumann sent mail with his unauthorized campaign disclaimer AND did not report a finance report of his own to note what would essentially be Neumann's personal campaign spending. Or maybe Khalid Khan just messed up and is trying to cover his tail by lying about it all. Regardless, neither is a positive indicator about Khalid-as-potential-council-member.

The reason that this isn't minor is that the entire purpose of reporting campaign expenditures is so that constituents know what's going into political communication. There may not be a huge number of voters who care much about the legal details of this, but it does portray a key aspect of how Khalid Khan hopes to represent the district ... by keeping as much information as possible from them. And that ought to be of concern to a few more.

ADD-ON: Kuff has some additional thoughts on this, particularly noting that Roy Morales actually had an error in his report despite this story's commentary otherwise. I'm curious ... if any of the hateHouston crowd had noted a similar discrepancy with either Locke or Parker, don't you think they'd cry "bias!" from the nearest mountaintop? But when it happens to the candidate with an R next to his name? ... crickets chirp. Ah, to be a non-partisan blogger!