Monroe election board to scrutinize late financial filings by MCCSC referendum supporters

The Yes for MCCSC political action committee, which is trying to convince voters to support the $8.5 million school referendum, has filed two of its required campaign finance reports late, with one of them also being incomplete.

Election officials said they will forward the information — along with other late and non-filers — to the local election board, which is scheduled to discuss the matters in December.

Meanwhile, a local parent who served on the MCCSC PAC last year, said last year’s campaign lacked urgency and transparency, and she worried about how that might undermine support for local schools in the long term.

Political action committees and candidates for office are required, by law, to file reports about their finances to provide voters with information about how much money they have raised, where the money comes from and how they’re spending it.

David Henry, an election board member and chair of the Monroe County Democrats, said the reports are a core function of Indiana election law.

Campaign finance reports provide transparency about who is supporting which candidates, he said, and candidates and PACs must file their paperwork.

“It’s an essential piece of running for office or supporting an issue or referendum,” he said.

Henry said the community usually sees a few late filings every year. Sometimes first-time candidates are not familiar with the rules. Other times, leadership changes at a political action committee can cause complications.

Late filers in previous years have received a warning for their first offense, he said. Subsequent offenses can result in fines.

The Yes for MCCSC PAC filed three campaign finance reports on Oct. 24, including one that should have been filed before the primary election in spring. Pre-election reports should have been filed by noon Oct. 20.

Larime Wilson, deputy clerk for voter registration, said via email the MCCSC PAC’s pre-election filing also did not cover the entire reporting period, with information missing from Oct. 1 to 13.

Elizabeth Ruh, the Yes for MCCSC PAC treasurer, and Valerie Pena, the chair, could not be reached. The Herald-Times left a message with Ruh’s employer last week but got no reply. When the HT contacted the business Friday morning to inquire again, the person who answered the phone said, “Elizabeth is not available at this time.”

Pena did not immediately reply to an email message. The person who answered a call at her office at Indiana University Friday morning said Pena was traveling.

The reports indicate that the campaign raised only $32.71 in the second quarter, had more than $30,000 cash on hand and since Jan. 1 had spent only about $2,000 with Bloomington Magazine. The campaign could not be reached to say why the filings did not list expenditures related to the advertising blitz that included 6-by-11-inch full-color postcards that have been mailed to registered voters to tout the benefits of the tax increase MCCSC is asking voters to support in the referendum.

A 12-page MCCSC "information brochure" with an introduction by MCCSC Superintendent Jeff Hauswald distributed and mailed to families contains a school calendar and enrollment information. Five pages are devoted to the referendum and the benefits more money would provide MCCSC students.

The back page, which encourages voting for the referendum, includes a line that says the brochure was prepared and paid for by MCCSC.

MCCSC parent: Prior campaign lacked transparency

Bethan Roberts, an MCCSC parent who was involved with the PAC for referendum campaigns in 2016 and 2022, said last year’s campaign got started months later than the 2016 campaign.

In addition, she said while she and others were aggressively fundraising to support the effort, they were surprised by the lack of urgency shown by the campaign’s leaders.

The prior campaign, in 2016, included op-eds in the local paper, even advertisements on the radio to drum up support for the referendum, Roberts said. Last year, the campaign spent very little of its money.

Roberts said that toward the end of the campaign, MCCSC Superintendent Jeff Hauswald told her and others involved in the campaign that the dollars would be used for a referendum in 2023, the one that voters have before them in Tuesday’s general election.

Roberts said that did not sit well with her, because campaigners had been telling people they were raising money for the campaign in 2022 — not one down the line.

“For me, integrity is first and foremost, and I didn’t appreciate the lack of forthrightness in planning,” she said. “It just seemed to be a lack of transparency.”

She also said she worries about how that lack of transparency may undermine what has generally been solid support of local schools.

“We are running a real risk here of jeopardizing broad support for referendums,” Roberts said, “and if we start making our voters question the integrity and the importance of these dollars we could end up in real trouble.”

Hauswald could not be immediately reached Friday to comment on Roberts' concerns.

He had said in a recent interview that the administration had nothing to do with the Yes for MCCSC campaign, as that is controlled entirely by the political action committee.

Other late campaign finance filings

Local election officials said Bloomington City Council candidate Isak Asare and the Bloomington Dissident Democrat political action committee filed their pre-election reports a few days late and that Ellettsville Town Council member Scott Oldham had not filed his pre-election report as of Friday.

Oldham did not immediately respond to a phone message Friday.

Asare said via email the late filing was a result of “simple human error after not receiving any reminders about the deadline. We’ll be more diligent to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Local journalist turned blogger Peter Dorfman, who runs an anti-Hamilton blog called The Dissident Democrat, acknowledged that what he does could be construed "in some obscure way" as political action committee-like, though he also said he believes classifying his blog as a PAC is “beyond absurd.”

The PAC has essentially no assets, he said. Total expenditures for the most recent period were $19, which paid for renewing his web domain.

He acknowledged he was “a little casual” about the campaign filing deadline.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

HT reporter Laura Lane contributed to this report.

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington school referendum PAC runs afoul of campaign filing rules