By Dave Janoski, Hazelton (PA) Standard-Speaker, February 27, 2008
27 Feb 2008 // Political committees connected to the region’s two Democratic congressmen have been fined $5,367 by the Federal Elections Commission for failing to make timely reports of campaign contributions and spending.
A $900 fine was levied against Citizens for Action, a political action committee affiliated with U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, D-11. Citizens for Action is a leadership PAC, a committee affiliated with a member of Congress that accepts donations, largely from special interest groups, and makes contributions to support other candidates.
Citizens for Action was fined for filing a report that covered fundraising and spending for October and November 2006 about a month later than required.
FEC records show Citizens for Action has raised more than $290,000 since 2006 and contributed $57,800 to Democratic candidates and $65,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
A Kanjorski spokeswoman and Peter A. Kanjorski, the congressman’s nephew who works as a consultant for Citizens for Action, did not return phone messages seeking comment.
Since 2006, Peter A. Kanjorski has been paid $44,666 for consulting fees and travel expenses by his uncle’s leadership PAC, FEC records show. The congressman’s wife is the volunteer treasurer for the PAC.
Ninety-six members of Congress have paid family members with campaign funds since 2002, according to a 2007 report from the non-profit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. FEC rules allow such payments as long as family members are paid fair-market rates.
Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, the only Republican seeking his party’s nomination in Kanjorski’s district, noted the criticism he’s taken from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee over his own FEC reports.
“Maybe they shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to criticize me. Maybe they should have checked their own candidate’s filings,” Barletta said.
Since his unsuccessful run for Congress in 2002, Barletta’s campaign committee reports have shown a $65,000 bank loan that has not been repaid. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has asked the FEC to investigate the loan. Barletta maintains he personally borrowed the money from the bank, then loaned the money to the campaign. He has been making payments to the bank, he said.
The larger of the two FEC fines, $4,467, was charged to Carney for Congress, the campaign committee of U.S. Rep. Chris Carney, D-10. Carney’s committee failed to file timely reports of $41,475 in contributions in the days leading up to the Nov. 7, 2006, general election, the FEC found.
FEC rules require that contributions of $1,000 or more made between two and 20 days leading up to an election must be reported within 48 hours. The Carney campaign did not report those contributions until Dec. 6, 2006, campaign finance records show.
Carney spokeswoman Rebecca Gale attributed the late reports to an administrative error.
“As soon as it was brought to our attention, we cooperated fully with the FEC to resolve the matter,” Gale said in an e-mailed statement.
A spokesman for Dan Meuser, who is seeking the GOP nomination in Carney’s 10th District, noted that many of the contributions reported late by the Carney campaign came from what he called “liberal special interests groups like the Feminist Majority PAC, Congressman Henry Waxman (D-California) and America Coming Together PAC (ACT).”
“Clearly, this failure to comply with the law was intended to withhold information from the voters,” Meuser campaign manager Eric Wallace said in an e-mailed statement.
The other Republican candidate in the 10th District, Chris Hackett, did not return an e-mail message seeking comment Tuesday.
The FEC fines against the Carney and Kanjorski committees were announced in a December 2007 FEC press release that reported $234,405 in penalties against 185 political committees levied between June and November 2007.