Paxton lets slide $700K in campaign fines
For the past 2½ years, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has declined to sue hundreds of candidates and elected officials who altogether owe more than $700,000 to the state in unpaid fines for campaign reporting violations.
Campaign finance laws are meant to give the public insight into politicians’ possible influences and allow voters to make informed decisions and hold officeholders accountable.
The Texas Ethics Commission levies the fines against candidates and elected officials who, for example, fail to file reports on their campaign fundraising and spending in a timely manner. Other violations include filing inaccurate or incomplete reports, misusing campaign or public funds for personal benefit, or producing and distributing misleading political advertising.
The state has few restrictions on political spending by design, with the laws supported by Republican lawmakers who generally oppose government regulation. It’s one of only 11 states that put no limits on individual contributions to campaigns.
And the Texas Ethics Commission, the regulatory agency in charge of enforcing those laws, doesn’t have many tools at its disposal to go after scofflaws aside from letter notifications. Its last line of defense against delinquent filers is to refer their cases to the Attorney General’s Office.
“We have very few rules when it comes to campaign finance in Texas, and the few that we do have are not enforced, clearly,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a government watchdog group. “What’s the point of even having the rules?”
Refusing to collect the fines is the latest exhibit of the antagonistic relationship between Paxton and the Texas Ethics Commission. In recent years, Paxton’s office has questioned the constitutionality of the agency’s work, and though his office is charged with defending state agencies in court, he has declined to defend it against a still ongoing suit filed by political allies of his who seek to gut the agency. The unusual move has cost the state over $1 million by forcing it to seek outside counsel.
Paxton did not respond to a request for comment, but in the past his office has called the agency indefensible.
“All of our decisions are guided by the same principle: We take the duty to defend the state seriously and routinely defend agency enforcement actions whenever consistent with our duty to uphold the Constitution,” Paxton’s then-spokesman Marc Rylander said in 2018. “However, where we determine those two duties are in conflict, our first obligation is to defend the Constitution and the basic rights it guarantees to each and every Texan.”
Paxton, a Republican, is seeking a third term this fall. He has been under indictment on felony securities fraud charges since 2015 and is under FBI investigation after his former aides accused him of taking bribes and abusing the power of his office to help a friend and campaign donor.
He also faces discipline from the Texas State Bar for filing what the bar deemed a frivolous lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election results. Paxton has denied any wrongdoing.
During primary season early this year, Paxton also filed his own campaign finance reports late or incomplete multiple times, though he avoided fines and issued corrections when necessary. One of the reports was missing donor information accounting for nearly all of the $2.8 million he raised during the reporting period. The campaign took almost two weeks to revise it.
‘Naming and shaming’
Chase Untermeyer, former chair of the Texas Ethics Commission and former Republican state representative for a Houston district, said he was surprised to hear no suits had been filed. The Attorney General’s Office always had a threshold dollar amount for filing suits, he said, but it never quit filing them altogether before Paxton. Untermeyer served on the commission from 2010 to 2017 and was chair from 2016 to 2017.
“In theory, I think the Attorney General’s Office should represent the ethics commission and carry out both the spirit and the letter of the law,” Untermeyer said, “but I recognize they have a limited staff and for very practical and perhaps financial reasons. They may limit or put a floor on the amount of times they consider enforcement.”
Many times, he said, the only option left to the agency is the “naming and shaming” of delinquent filers on a publicly available list on its website. As of last month, the list showed nearly 500 people owed fines that summed more than $2 million.
The halt of collections cases comes after the office filed 36 suits in 2019 and 15 in 2018, agency records show.
Democrat Rochelle Garza, Paxton’s opponent as he seeks re-election, said in a statement to Hearst Newspapers that this is “just another example of Ken Paxton’s impotent use of his office.”
“Paxton cares more about his extremist agenda than doing his job and bringing accountability to our electoral system,” she said. “I will bring back integrity and accountability to our government. There will be no more free passes for bad actors under my administration.”
The Texas Ethics Commission refers cases to the Attorney General’s Office once fines accrue to $1,000. Smaller unpaid fines often don’t justify the legal costs of initiating a suit.
“The decisions of when or if to file a lawsuit to collect an unpaid penalty and any post judgment remedies are out of the commission's hands,” said J.R. Johnson, the agency’s general counsel. “Agencies, including the Texas Ethics Commission, typically do not have the independent authority to initiate litigation on their own; they must seek representation from the attorney general.”
Texas has limited options when it comes to financial repercussions — it can put a hold on candidates’ and elected officials’ financial accounts with the state, if they have them — but unlike other states, it can’t levy tax liens or garnish wages. If that isn’t effective, it must decide whether to file a civil suit requesting a judge to order payment.
Even this, Texas’ most aggressive tool for pursuing delinquent filers, is seldom effective. A Hearst Newspapers analysis in 2020 found that the overwhelming majority, or about 72 percent, of about $1 million in fines that a court demanded be paid were never collected and written off by the Attorney General’s Office as “uncollectible.”
Dems are top debtors
The state’s top campaign fine debtor is Democratic state Rep. Ron Reynolds of Missouri City who owes more than $65,000, even despite the Attorney General’s Office going to court at least seven times since 2008 in attempt to collect the fines.
Reynolds, a former personal injury attorney who was disbarred, has been in the Legislature since 2011. Reached by email, Reynolds said he has been making payments and will be finished by Dec. 31. He disputed the sum still left to pay, though he did not say how much he believes it ought to be.
“I had a delay due to COVID-19,” Reynolds said about the late payments.
The person with the second-highest amount of unpaid fines, Marilynn Mayse, will be sworn in as a Dallas County criminal court judge in January after she won the Democratic primary and faced no Republican challenger.
The state has filed suit in the past on at least some of the more than $42,000 that she owes. Mayse did not respond to a request for comment.
Texas Ethics Commission Chair Mary Kennedy said in a statement that while the agency recognizes the Attorney General’s Office has many “weighty issues and important controversies to address” and that many fines are relatively small, there is still more that could be done to improve collections.
“Of course we believe the collection of unpaid ethics penalties deserves to be prioritized,” Kennedy said. “Recognizing that the Office of Attorney General may not have the resources needed to pursue every case, the commission has recommended that the Legislature consider additional consequences for noncompliance or granting the Ethics Commission the independent authority to initiate lawsuits to collect unpaid penalties.”