Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Friday, May 09, 2008
State GOP still trying to clean up its books
MINNEAPOLIS — Even as the state Republican Party calls DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken to task over problems with his personal finances, the party continues to try to clean up its own bookkeeping problems.
The Star Tribune reported Thursday that the state GOP has spent about $78,000 on accounting services since early 2007, as part of a yearlong, self-initiated audit. Since December 2006, the Federal Election Commission has flagged several problems in 28 letters to the GOP.
Those include failure to fully disclose expenses, questionable transfers of funds, math errors and other reporting problems. The party has repeatedly missed deadlines to correct its reports and has told the FEC it is working on solving the problems.
State GOP chairman Ron Carey told The Associated Press Thursday that the party is working to get into compliance. Michael Toner, a former FEC chairman retained by the party to settle its issues, said the agency’s reporting requirements on state political parties are “extraordinarily complex” and that other state parties have had similar problems since they were instituted in 2002.
During the same period, the DFL party was questioned 19 times by the FEC over reporting problems. But the DFL was able to address the issues raised, except for what it called a persistent software glitch.
Carey has criticized Franken for irregularities with workers’ compensation payments, disability insurance premiums and the filing of taxes. Franken has attributed the problems to mistakes by his accountant.
“Why do Hollywood celebrities think there is one set of rules for them and one set of rules for everyone else when it comes to paying taxes?” Carey said last month.
Franken campaign manager Andy Barr declined to criticize the state GOP problems. “I think it would sort of be the wrong thing to do to jump to conclusions while they’re still sorting out their affairs,” he said.
Carey told the AP it’s not hypocritical for the GOP to criticize Franken’s bookkeeping problems while it deals with its own.
“We have some inadvertent areas in a very complex, technical environment,” Carey said. “He’s making entry-level accounting-type errors. We think to equate the two is really an apples to oranges comparison.”
University of Minnesota law professor Guy-Uriel Charles, an expert on election law, said after reviewing some of the correspondence that the GOP’s irregularities are not unusual.
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