Giving in school-board races raises complaints

Group not tied to registered PAC, filer says

The leader of a school choice advocacy organization said Wednesday that he filed two complaints with the Arkansas Ethics Commission against the president of the Little Rock Education Association.

They were for making illegal campaign contributions to their endorsed School Board candidates, said Gary Newton, executive director of the Arkansas Learns organization,

In response to a request from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Newton provided copies of the complaints that he submitted against Little Rock Education President Teresa Knapp Gordon.

Graham Sloan, executive director of the Arkansas Ethics Commission, said Wednesday that his agency is compelled by law to keep pending matters confidential and, as a result, does not release nor confirm the receipt of complaints until a case is decided.

Newton wrote in the complaints that the school district employee organization — headed by Gordon — contributed $1,000 to Vicki Hatter, a candidate for the Zone 6 seat on a newly established Little Rock School Board, and $500 to Zone 5 candidate Ali Noland, both in violation of Amendment 94 to the Arkansas Constitution.

The employee organization has endorsed a slate

of candidates for Tuesday’s School Board election. Newton and Arkansas Learns also are actively promoting candidates for School Board seats — including opponents to Hatter and Noland.

Amendment 94, approved by voters in 2014, directs in part that campaign contributions be made only by individuals, political parties or political action committees — and not by organizations without registered political action committees.

A check of 2020 political action committees registered with the Arkansas secretary of state’s office did not include among its 355 listings a political action committee, or PAC, for the Little Rock Education Association.

“My campaign confirmed today with the LREA and a search of the secretary of state’s online database that the LREA’s PAC registration is not up to date,” Noland said Wednesday after learning about Newton’s complaint to the Ethics Commission.

“We immediately returned the contribution. Our final campaign finance report will reflect this,” she said.

Hatter said Wednesday evening that she also just learned that the employees union did not have a registered political action committee. She said the contribution to her campaign would be returned today.

Gordon issued a statement in response to news of Newton’s complaints, saying that an effort is being made to correct the matter quickly.

“We aren’t political operatives,” Gordon said. “We’re educators and we haven’t had a chance to participate in democracy in our school district in over five years.”

Residents of the Little Rock School District on Tuesday will elect a nine-member board to govern a district that has operated under state control without an elected board for almost six years.

The Little Rock Education Association has historically endorsed and contributed to candidates for the School Board, but the last School Board election in the district was in September 2014.

“To be clear, our donations come from the people who work most closely with our students, and we support candidates who share our passion for our public schools and are committed to putting students first,” Gordon said.

“While we may have made some paperwork errors, the donations were given with good intentions, unlike the huge amounts of money being dumped into the race by the ultra wealthy privatizers working to make a profit off of our children,” she said about the school choice organization.

In addition to his citizen complaints to the Ethics Commission, Newton has pointed out in recent social media posts that two-thirds of the 19 candidates for the nine School

Board seats failed to submit to the Pulaski County clerk’s office — or submit on time — their required Statements of Financial Interest.

Those statements — in which candidates describe generally the sources of their family incomes — are due on the Monday after the close of the candidate filing period. That would have been Aug. 10 this year for the Little Rock School Board candidates.

“With school boards, there are not a lot of hoops to jump through, but it is very specific” on what must be done, Newton said.

Those that did file by the Aug. 10 deadline were FranSha’ Anderson and Lou Jackson from Zone 6, Norma Johnson in Zone 7, Benjamin Coleman in Zone 8 and Jeff Wood in Zone 9.

Sloan, the Arkansas Ethics Commission director, said his office does check on whether candidates file required documents.

“If someone doesn’t file the [financial interest statement] we send them a letter and ask them to, and if they do [file the report], that’s usually the end of it from our side,” Sloan said.

“If a citizen does file a complaint and we conduct an investigation and there is a violation, well then the possible sanctions include the issuance of a public letter. There are three levels of that: a caution, a warning or a reprimand, and/ or the imposition of a fine. The range on fines is $50 to $3,500.”

Failure to file on a local level a statement of financial interest is likely to result in a letter of caution and maybe a small fine, Sloan said.