Some AZ lawmakers owe thousands for late campaign finance reports. A bill could erase the fees

There are a host of Arizona state lawmakers who owe the state thousands of dollars in late fees for failing to file campaign finance reports on time. Three have late fees that have racked up into the six-digits.

But, only one paid her fines in full this year. And now, there’s a bill that would stop the fines based on old accounts — erasing late fees back to 2016. An amendment would cap the fees at $5,000.

It all goes back to the 1990s, when lawmakers decided to crack down on campaign corruption. But the laws have never really been enforced.

Ray Stern with the Arizona Republic joined The Show to tell us why.

Amber Victoria Singer/KJZZ

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Ray.

RAY STERN: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming in. OK, so how much do some of these lawmakers owe?

RAY STERN: Well, it was shocking to a couple to let them know that some of these are six-digit fines.

Sally Ann Gonzales, a senator who’s been a senator for, I think, eight terms over — yeah, she’s been there for a while. And so she’s got these old campaign account finance late fees of $663,000.

LAUREN GILGER: Wow. That’s a lot of money.

RAY STERN: That’s a lot of money for someone that makes $24,000 a year as a legislator. And this is both a Republican and Democrat issue. Republican Walt Blackman, who’s from Snowflake, he owes about $300,000.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. In fines. OK, so they’re not the only ones. There are more than 20 others you’re reporting who owe smaller amounts, and it’s fines that have racked up against political parties, PACs, things like that as well.

RAY STERN: Right. I counted 25 current candidates — including incumbent office holders — who owe more than $1,000 in these late fees for not filing their campaign finance reports on time.

And the reason I held it to $1,000 is because there’s a law that says that basically you’re not supposed to ... run for office if you owe more than $1,000 of these late fees.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. So tell us about this enforcement part of this. Like, how have they racked up these late fees and really most people still run?

RAY STERN: Right. There’s a couple of different ways that this happens. One is you didn’t pay your campaign finance reports — or you didn’t file your campaign finance reports on time, and it created a late fee.

Back in the ’90s, as you mentioned, they decided that there was a problem with candidates and office holders not turning in their campaign finance reports on time. These are really important documents. They show how much a politician is getting from donations and also how much they’re spending on their campaign and what they’re spending it on. So really, voters need to know who’s paying them and what they’re doing with their money.

And if you don’t ... file your campaign finance report on time, then nobody knows. Some of these reports are filed so late that the election happens and they still haven’t filed that report.

And so to curb that, in the ’90s they put these late fees on there. The late fees are very onerous. They’re supposed to sort of let you know that you need to file these reports. It’s $10 a day for the first 15 days and then $25 a day after that.

LAUREN GILGER: Oh, wow.

RAY STERN: Sally Ann Gonzales, if you look at one of her old campaign finance accounts where the big fees are, it’s just shocking to see that some of her reports are thousands of days late. She owes $75,000 for this one, $65,000 for this one, and it adds up to this huge money.

But they don’t enforce it.

LAUREN GILGER: They don’t enforce it, right. That’s the —

RAY STERN: They don’t really enforce it. They enforce it sometimes. And some candidates get scared about this, they pay their amounts.

Consuelo Hernandez is a representative from Tucson. She paid $24,000 this year, which is equivalent to her annual salary. Her sister, who is also a Tucson lawmaker, owes over $100,000 in these late fees but hasn’t paid any of them.

And that’s because, in effect, you don’t have to pay them unless there’s some kind of court order that said you had to pay them. Just the fact that they exist, even though they’re there to make you file your report on time, there’s, there’s just no teeth in the law.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. OK, so this is something that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has tried to change just in the last couple of years, right, but didn’t successfully do this exactly?

RAY STERN: Exactly. Before Fontes came into office, there was waivers, essentially, that the savvy office holders could get. So if you really didn’t understand the system, you might end up paying $1,000 or $2,000 — which could be onerous unless you have a lot of money sitting around.

But if you know what to do, you’d go to the Secretary of State’s Office and ask for a waiver and they would waive that down. As I wrote three years ago ... former Rep. Cesar Chavez owed $60,000, and they made him pay $1,000 of that. This year, the Attorney General’s office, made Sen. Kiana Sears pay $250 out of $14,000 that she owed.

But the Secretary of State’s Office, Adrian Fontes, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes decided that he wouldn’t do waivers anymore when he got in office. So these amounts have just kind of ballooned up, and they’re looking very high.

And like I said, 25 lawmakers and other office holders owe more than $1,000, but nobody’s making them pay.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. OK, so that’s where the lawmakers come in again, and now they’re trying to basically change the law here, get rid of some of them?

RAY STERN: Right. Part of the problem is that some of these old campaign finance accounts that are still active are charging the lawmakers late fees even if they’ve filed the same reports in a different account. And some of these are not really legitimate, others are.

But what Rep. Jeff Weninger from Chandler wants to do is go back to 2016 and wipe out all of the late fees that are in these accounts that are essentially defunct at this point. So the candidate isn’t using them to report their donations and spending.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. And then there’s an amendment to that that would also cap late fees in the future, it sounds like?

RAY STERN: Right. It would cap them at $5,000. So you just wouldn’t see these large amounts, which are kind of a farce anyway if they’re not making them pay.

But Sen. Analise Ortiz, a Democrat, she had hoped to get an amendment in that would actually prevent people from running for office at all unless they pay their late fees. That is still not going into this law.

So there could be some shenanigans in the future where people are intentionally not filing their report and then getting away with it.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So, I mean, last 50, 30 seconds here, Ray. What’s the endgame here? Like, how far has this proposal gotten? Does it sound like most of these lawmakers will end up having to pay these?

RAY STERN: I think that the lawmakers understand that they need to do something about this. It’s just the public can’t accept the fact that there’s, there are penalties that are not being enforced. So this law has a good chance of passing. It’s got bipartisan support. And it doesn’t do that much, which they like.

LAUREN GILGER: Which they like.

All right, we’ll leave it there. Ray Stern with the Arizona Republic joining us. Ray, thank you very much for coming in, thanks for your reporting here. Appreciate it very much.

RAY STERN: You bet, thanks.