Former Augusta mayor Hardie Davis Jr. has been fined $16,900 for campaign finance violations, in another blow for the embattled former state legislator.
In a December ruling obtained by The Augusta Press on Friday, Administrative Law Judge Kimberly Schroer ordered Davis to pay 23 individual civil penalties totaling $16,900 for late or never-filed campaign finance and personal financial disclosure reports.
The largest separate fines against Davis, who left office in 2022, were two $5,000 penalties.
A single violation of Georgia campaign finance laws can result in a fine of up to $1,000, and repeat violators can be fined up to $25,000 per offense.
Davis’ two largest fines were for second instances of his refusing to file a required report altogether, and for using campaign funds to pay a credit card bill for purposes that have never been disclosed.
The State Ethics Commission launched two investigations into Davis’ conduct after his campaign was tied to a 2018 billboard campaign in support of building a new arena at the former Regency Mall site.
A few days before Schroer filed the ruling, Davis agreed to enter a consent order and pay a $250 fine in the billboard case.
Davis wasn’t exempt from filing campaign financial reports or personal financial disclosure reports, despite being term-limited as of 2019, Schroer’s ruling said. But as several local officials do, however, Davis began filing affidavits, sometimes prematurely, sometimes late, stating he had no plan to raise or spend more than $2,500.
MORE: Al Dempsey, Columbia County Planning Commissioner chair, passes away at 78
“He almost immediately exceeded the statutory threshold for the exemption,” investigators showed, wrote Schroer.
Davis testified that as he began his second term, “he had turnover in his volunteer staff and his records were not well-maintained,” it said.
Davis refuses to release records
During the investigation, the ethics commission requested Davis provide campaign bank records from 2017-2021, but the then-mayor provided only 2017 and 2018.
He “understood” the commission could subpoena the bank records directly from the bank, and it did, the ruling said.
“Upon review of those records, the commission discovered contributions and expenditures that had not been timely disclosed by Mr. Davis,” it said. They included previously unreported contributions of more than $10,000 and undisclosed spending of more than $3,000.
In a small victory for Davis, the judge ruled the ethics commission had not proved some of his campaign credit card spending – a new LinkedIn profile, resume service, ESPN and coffee – was beyond what could be “necessary and ordinary” to a campaign, as the law requires.
Davis also has fought The Augusta Press’ open records requests for information about spending on what he claims to be official mayor duties.
As ethics investigators attempted to link his bank records to campaign finance reports – such as credit card payments for $858.36 and $1,500 – Davis, who at one point reported raising $277,608 to spend on two election campaigns, simply refused to provide them.
“He admitted at the hearing that he did not know what all the expenses were that were charged on the campaign card, and he did not have a full itemization, despite being on notice for over a year that the commission was questioning these expenditures,” the ruling said.
Joe Cusack, deputy director and general counsel for the ethics commission, testified that Davis’ incomplete response to the subpoenas indicated “Mr. Davis was not being forthright.”
Ethics panel sought big penalty
The commission thought a “substantial penalty” against the former mayor was appropriate, “given Mr. Davis’ lack of transparency, his attempt to conceal improper expenditures by failing to produce bank records and his failure to prove that the suspicious expenditures were in fact ordinary and necessary,” the ruling states.
In a post-hearing brief, Davis had argued that all fines “should be waived or suspended because he was cooperative with the investigation” and that he filed or amended all reports once informed they were late, which he had not.
The most serious of the fines were for the two unidentified credit card payments. “The true recipient of the expenditures is not the credit card company, but the person or entity whom the campaign paid with a credit card,” it said.
“The court concludes that the commission met its burden to prove that making two un-itemized payments to a credit card company with campaign contributions without specifying whom the campaign paid with the credit card and for what purpose is not an ordinary expenditure and constitutes two separate violations,” it said.
Davis isn’t alone among Augusta elected officials in racking up fines for late reports. Several have been fined $125 once or twice for missing deadlines, while the ethics commission waived many penalties after changing its reporting system.
What’s next
Davis, who did not respond to a request for comment through his attorney, Ed Tarver, can file motions for a review of the ruling by the ethics commission or a judge.
The ruling is expected to be presented at the next meeting of the ethics commission.
Augusta’s mayor is largely a ceremonial title lacking authority except where federal law requires it. While in office Davis saw his office budget raised to more than $500,000 and it remains the same under Mayor Garnett Johnson.
Davis’ spending issues date to at least 2017, when local media revealed he was using funds intended for a youth charity to pay a political consultant.
As COVID-19 waned the Augusta Commission tried to rein in Davis’ use of his city-issued card, which he used for pricey events, extensive travel and to pay consultants, including one with whom Davis’ wife accused of him of having an affair. Neither an in-house audit nor new credit card policy had much effect.
Susan McCord is a staff writer with The Augusta Press. Reach her at susan@theaugustapress.com
