State ethics commission officials said the $16,900 fine imposed on former Mayor Hardie Davis “sets a good example” for local candidates who break campaign rules.
“It gets the word out on what to do, and what not to do, which is what happened in this case,” said Joe Cusack, deputy executive secretary and general counsel for the state agency.
The commission received a report on the fine imposed on Davis at a Monday meeting. The December ruling by an administrative law judge went into effect in January after ethics commission members declined to take further action on it within 30 days.
In the second of two ethics probes launched by the agency, investigators found Davis filed affidavits stating he would not raise or spend campaign funds in excess of $2,500 during the final two years of his campaign.
The affidavits, popular with Augusta politicians, allow them to skip filing the semiannual or quarterly reports of their campaign fundraising and spending.
“The public basically had the wool pulled over their eyes on these reports, because this affidavit relieved him from filing any disclosure reports,” Cusack said.
Almost immediately, Davis would exceed the $2,500 thresholds. “We were able to find out through bank records there was money coming into the campaign and coming out of the campaign exceeding $2,500, and he should have resumed filing right away,” he said.
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Taking a look at the charges, they included items such as ESPN Plus and the Better Me weight loss program. Other payments went for things that “we still do not know to this day,” Cusack said.
The commission spent most of the meeting imposing fines on other candidates of $125 up to $500 for late candidates late filing a report. Some who cooperated right away got a reduced or waived fine.
Davis’ response wasn’t an example of cooperation, said David Emadi, executive secretary for the ethics commission.
“It definitely works in the other direction as well, when you’re trying to hide, evade or not turn it over in the process,” he said.
The panel initially asked Davis for his campaign bank records. “Mr. Davis provided bank records from 2017 and 2018 and said he couldn’t locate any other account years,” Emadi said.
“When we subpoenaed the bank directly, magically a lot of these issues happened to be in the years when these records were not being provided.”
The judge fined Davis 23 separate penalties for missing deadlines to file campaign financial and personal financial reports or not filing the reports at all.
The largest fines were two $5,000 penalties. One was for never filing a June 2021 report and the other for a second instance of making credit card payments of campaign funds “to undisclosed recipients for unspecified purposes.”
The discussion provided a “good Segway” into a new rule adopted by the commission Monday, officials said. Now, when a court renders a decision in an ethics case, the text of the ruling must be sent to the ethics commission within two days, so the body will have time to call a meeting if it wants to reject or modify it.
Emadi also updated the panel on election law changes legislators are undertaking. They include moving candidates to the same quarterly filing schedule as federal candidates, restricting ethics complaints within 60 days of an election and removing local elections offices from the reporting process.
