What is wrong with these pictures?
Knollenberg's Federal Election Commission (FEC) report for the 1st Quarter of 2007 is wrong.
There is money reported as having been collected from special interest Political Action Committees (PACs), but according to the FEC, Knollenberg doesn't reveal from whom it was collected.
Click on the document to the left to enlarge it.
You will see that that the FEC lists Knollenberg as having collected:
Total Receipts: $264,311
Transfers From Authorized Committees: $0
Individual Contributions: $187,530
Non-Party (e.g. PACs) or Other Committees: $74,800
But if you went to the original FEC page for that document, and clicked on that last line item, the FEC link to "non-Party (e.g., PACs) or Other Committees", it only lists 4 PACs that contributed for a sum of $9,500. But the line item above clearly shows receipts of $74,800.
That is a difference of ($74,500 - $ 9,500 =) $65,000. In other words, we only know the source of $9,500 of those special interest PAC funds. Where did the $65,000 come from?
Did Knollenberg and his Chief Lobbyist fail
to properly report $65,000
that they got from special interest PACs?
To be fair, and we are always fair, this error could be the fault of the FEC. If it is, then we would expect Knollenberg's campaign staff to make certain that the error is corrected quickly.
2 comments:
I love your crap. It's priceless.
You spend a half dozen paragraphs showing a discrepancy, and then at the end you tag on the "to be fair" the FEC "could be in error".
As you no doubt know as an experienced political activist, not only are FEC online reports sometimes not accurate (though I'd say they usually are), the more common point is that they are incredibly complex and not organized in the most intuitive ways. And the reporting process itself is very intricate and most "errors" by the Treasurer are incredibly trivial and corrected. And finally, many of the balancing errors, potentially like this, relate to the cutoff date and/or date data entry issues. It doesn't mean there is a lack of balance - it could mean that donations cross-over the filing deadline but were entered wrong.
Regardless, to "be fair," you might have done more inquiry, rather than supposition.
Chet,
I know that Knollenberg's staff reads this blog.
Since they don't respond to my emails or return my phone calls, I posted the information here to notify them of the error.
I think it is in their best interest to get it corrected.
I do know how much he got from lobbyists. We will be reporting on that information in detail in the near future.
But to date, Knollenberg's online FEC information is still not correct. It has been changed, and we will report that, but it is still not correct.
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