State GOP fined for bad finance reports

January 5th, 2010, 11:09 am
by Martin Wisckol, Politics reporter

The California Republican Party has agreed to pay $18,000 in fines for eight counts of filing inaccurate financial reports in 2004, according to the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

The violations concern October and December reports in which the state GOP overstated expenditures, failed to report accrued expenses, overstated the cash balance, and failed to report vendor information. The dollar amounts ranged from $128,000 to $562,000.

Republican Party officials said the errors were inadvertent.

In this explanation of the violations and fines, the FPPC said the GOP should have known better because it had had similar problems in the past. The FPPC also noted the amounts concerned were significant. Among the mitigating factors listed by the FPPC were that the amounts were relatively small in relations to the $24 million raised by the party, and that more than half of the errors occured on post-election documents.

The stipulated agreement is scheduled to be approved by the FPPC on Jan. 14.

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