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Suit: Clean Elections agency misused tax dollars Committee says funds went to self-promotion and electioneering purposes by Mary Jo Pitzl - Nov. 22, 2011 10:00 PM The Arizona Republic The state agency that provides public campaign financing used public dollars to promote itself, spent more than the law allows on education efforts and wrongly used public money to try and derail a ballot measure, a lawsuit alleges. The suit, filed by a committee called No Taxpayer Money for Politicians, seeks to stop the activities of the Arizona Citizens Clean Election Commission and collect damages against the commission as a whole as well as each of its five members. "They're using this (public money) for electioneering purposes and not for educating voters," said former state Sen. Jonathan Paton, now chairman of the No Taxpayer Money committee. The suit outlines parts of an education and marketing plan launched last year that Paton claims is actually electioneering because it sought to halt a legislative effort to put a repeal of Clean Elections on the 2012 ballot. The contract has amounted to $5.5 million over the past three years. Todd Lang, the commission's executive director, called the suit in Maricopa County Superior Court a wrong-headed effort to portray the commission's education fund as a campaign war chest. "They want to end our education fund, they always have," Lang said of commission critics. The voter-approved commission is funded by a surcharge on court fees, tax credits, donations made on state tax forms and fines charged by the commission. The suit is being handled by the Goldwater Institute. |