-Caveat Lector- From http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/epaper/editions/sunday/news_d3694803c61ca1b90 002.html
Firms list donations unreported by Bush By S.V. Date, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 29, 2002 TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican Party have not reported as much as $221,000 in donated corporate airplane flights it provided his campaign, despite a state law requiring that such gifts be listed. Paradoxically, the full costs of the expensive flights are listed as donations to the state Republican Party, and GOP sources say those records are kept -- to the penny -- so Bush will know exactly how much help each company provided to his reelection campaign. The total value of the donated air travel exceeds the $50,000 limit for cash and "in-kind" assistance his campaign is allowed to accept from the party. "In-kind" contributions refer to services that are provided free, such as printing yard signs, providing meals or flying the candidate, and no money is exchanged. Bush campaign staff would not comment for this story, and Republican Party officials said the law does not require such reporting. But Joe Little, a University of Florida law professor who specializes in constitutional law and government, said: "A strong case can be made that our Florida statutes are being flouted here. This practice is wrong." Between August 2001 and Sept. 5 of this year, Bush took nearly 50 flights aboard the corporate aircraft of wealthy donors, for which those donors claimed $221,987.46 in "in- kind" contributions to the party, according to a Palm Beach Post review of campaign finance reports. Although the contributions are listed as "air travel" provided to the GOP, the governor and his aides, for the most part, did the flying. According to elections law experts and The Post's review, the Republican Party and Bush's campaign appear to be: • Exceeding the $50,000 limit on how much a candidate can accept from a political party. An election law passed in 1997 allows parties to give candidates as much as they like in five categories: polling, research, consulting, phone calls and "cost for campaign staff." But the law specifically says that all other items must count toward that $50,000 cap. • Failing to report the many tens of thousands of dollars of donated air travel used by Bush's campaign staff. All "in-kind" transfers from the party, whether they count toward the $50,000 limit or are covered by one of the five exemptions, must be reported by both the party and the candidate. • Accepting earmarked donations of airplanes for Bush's candidacy, even though state law prohibits such earmarking. The airplane rides are solicited by a member of the Bush campaign for use by the Bush campaign, which by definition makes the flights earmarked donations for Bush. Violation of the state election law is a first-degree misdemeanor, punishable by jail time as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in administrative fines. One former top GOP campaign operative privately called the detailed reporting of the plane rides to the party "foolish and unnecessary" because there's no need for donors to have a public documentation of what they actually gave. "Jeb knows whose damned plane he's on," he said. 'No airplane questions' The Post reported Sept. 8 that Bush and three other Republican candidates for Cabinet offices paid $36,887 for the campaign use of private airplanes -- a small fraction of the market value of the flights, which probably ranged from $386,400 to $772,700. That story was based on campaign finance reports covering the period Jan. 1, 2001, through Aug. 16, 2002. All the private planes are owned by GOP donors whose corporations either do business with the state or whose businesses are regulated by the state. The practice of providing such discounted flights was given the blessing of the Bush-appointed Florida Elections Commission last month. Bush and his campaign staff have been sensitive to their use of private planes all summer. In July, campaign spokesman Todd Harris warned reporters about to take an $8,000 flight aboard Tampa businessman John Sykes' Gulfstream II jet that he didn't like stories about cushy private planes. In early September, Bush refused to acknowledge a Post reporter's question about his use of donated airplanes. And two weeks ago, Bush and Harris protested when a Fort Myers reporter asked how it was possible that he could have flown on a jet all day and yet not know who owned it, as Bush originally had claimed. GOP officials initially said they would produce passenger lists for the flights and find legal opinions and precedents validating their practice. Later they said the practice is legal because it is not specifically prohibited. Party spokesman Towson Fraser said the party believes that air travel falls under the "cost for campaign staff" exception to the $50,000 limit, and that the party is not required to report which candidates benefit from the donated planes. "There's nothing that makes us leap that gap between taking a contribution on the one hand and the expenditure we make to the candidate on the other," Fraser said. Who benefits? On some campaign trips, Bush raised money for both himself and the party. In August of 2001, for example, Bush flew on Verizon Communications' $24 million Challenger jet to Puerto Rico. He raised $30,000 for his own campaign and $112,500 for the party. For use of the plane, Bush paid Verizon $1,156, and the company gave the party a corresponding "in-kind" donation of $54,572. On other trips, Bush has gone purely for campaign appearances, with no fund-raising for either himself or the party. On May 14, Bush flew from Tallahassee to Tampa, Orlando and back to Tallahassee aboard the $5.5 million Cessna Bravo jet owned by Fort Pierce citrus processor Bill Becker with only reporters, campaign staff and his FDLE bodyguard. Bush and each of the three reporters paid $544.50, and Becker's company, Peace River Citrus Products, listed an in-kind donation of $1,652 for that trip. On July 11, Bush took four Police Benevolent Association officials, two aides, one bodyguard and three reporters on a daylong campaign swing touting his law enforcement endorsements aboard Sykes' Gulfstream. No party officials were aboard. Bush paid $624 to Sykes' company in the period, while the company listed an in-kind donation of $7,655.69. On Sept. 9, Bush flew to Melbourne on the $12.5 million Hawker 800XP jet of Ohio-based National Century Financial Enterprises with a campaign spokeswoman, a travel aide, two reporters and his FDLE security detail. No party officials were aboard. And before a flight last week from Tallahassee to Miami aboard the $20 million Falcon 50 jet of Leesburg developer Gary Morse, campaign spokesman Harris said no party officials were traveling with Bush. Financial reports on those two trips have not been filed yet. But exactly what benefit to the party is there when campaign aides spend their day helping Bush travel? Fraser said the campaign aides are arguably supporting Bush, not the party, but reiterated that party officials do not believe they are required to report the donated airplanes that get them to the campaign events. "We could (report it), but we don't because that's not what's required under the law," Fraser said. He also agreed that some passengers aboard some flights, such as the four PBA officials on the July 11 flight, cannot possibly be eligible for the "cost for campaign staff" loophole. The party does not believe the value of their flight must be reported because the party "never cut a check" for the flight -- only received an in-kind donation, Fraser said. Florida election law, however, states: "In-kind contributions must be reported by the candidate... and by the political party." Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride's campaign believes that money for staff salaries does not count toward the $50,000 limit, but campaign travel expenses do, spokesman Alan Stonecipher said. McBride's campaign, not the Democratic Party, pays for all his staff's expenses, including travel, Stonecipher said. Critics like election lawyer Ron Meyer of Tallahassee, a McBride supporter, said Bush and the GOP can't have it both ways: Either the campaign aides accompanying Bush are providing some service to the party and not Bush, or the aides' travel counts toward the $50,000 cap. He said an easier way to understand the problem was to imagine if the party were to use $5,000 of its own money to charter a plane for the governor's campaign for a day. Then there would be no question that the entire $5,000 was, in fact, being used by Bush's campaign. "The further you peel back the onion, the less logical it looks," he said. "It's creative bookkeeping, at the very least." Meyer, himself a private pilot, said the party violated another prohibition in that law when it accepted "in-kind" contributions of airplane flights for specific candidates. "How does the party take a flight as a gift if it's not earmarked?" Meyer said. A new accounting system Through the Sept. 5 reporting period, the Democratic Party had not reported any "in-kind" aircraft donations. Two other statewide Republican candidates, Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson and incoming Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, took flights corresponding to between $4,000 and $7,000 of "in-kind" donations to the party -- well under the $50,000 limit. McBride said he instituted a policy of chartering planes at full cost after the earlier analysis by The Post found that he had accepted a flight on Tampa lawyer Steven Yerrid's $6.6 million Beechjet 400A, paying only $444 for a flight that would have cost $3,600 on the open market. Since then, he has chartered planes from various firms and said he recently received a bill for about $50,000 for his flights just before the Sept. 10 primary. "We're paying the full freight," he said, and challenged Bush to do the same. "I don't understand it," McBride said. "They've got so much money. They keep bragging about how much money they've got.... It seems sort of a silly thing to do. I'm not going to do it, and I don't think the governor should be doing it." Question never addressed The legality of Bush's own travel aboard the private planes at a small fraction of the actual cost is not in question. That practice was approved by the Florida Elections Commission at a meeting last month, when it refused to investigate use of such planes by attorney general candidate Charlie Crist. The panel, however, did not address whether the accounting of the flights as "in-kind" gifts to the party was legal. Commission Chairwoman Susan MacManus said the issue has never come before the group, so she can't hazard an opinion. "I'm not willing to comment about any scenarios," she said. A commission lawyer said she could not discuss questions that could come before the panel at some point. Other elections experts who work for the state had similar reactions regarding the touchy issue with potentially enormous political ramifications. "I'm not touching it with a 10-foot pole," said one. Whether a violation has taken place is a matter for the Florida Elections Commission to determine. If a complaint is filed, and if the commission finds that there has been a violation, it can fine the candidate and the parties as much as three times the value of the illegal contributions, as well as refer the matter to a prosecutor to handle the misdemeanor criminal penalties. 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