State Senator and Elections Director candidate Pam Roach filed this F-1 personal financial disclosure statement with the PDC on December 26.
The disclosure is both late and incomplete. Note this excerpt, where Roach was to list all of her financial assets of sufficient value.
The asset value ranges are coded by this key:
First, she was apparently sloppy about "Les Schwab", which is a privately-held tire retailer. Presumably she holds stocks in a brokerage account at Charles Schwab. More importantly, candidates are required to "identify each stock or other asset" owned. It is insufficient to merely list the name of the brokerage where the assets are held.
Roach committed a similar lapse in her annual disclosure of April 2008 (as required for legislators).
Her December disclosure for the Elections Director race was filed 2 days late. The disclosures are due within 14 days of "becoming a candidate", explained in the PDC's financial disclosure instruction manual(p. 3)
You become a candidate when you first receive contributions, make expenditures, reserve space or facilities for your race, buy commercial advertising space or time, authorize another person to take any of these actions on your behalf, or when you make a public announcement that you're a candidate or you file a Declaration of Candidacy, whichever occurs first.Other PDC disclosures indicate that Roach accepted contributions on Dec. 10, so the disclosure was due on Dec. 24, not Dec. 26 when filed.
Any serious candidate for Elections Director should be a stickler for following election and disclosure laws. And Roach has no excuse for not being familiar with these laws. Not only has she been a candidate many times and a state legislator for years, but she's the ranking Republican and former chair of the Senate committee that oversees elections and PDC regulations. Her failure to file a timely and complete financial disclosure statement should raise questions about her commitment to transparency, and about her capacity for working at the level of detail required of an Elections Director.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 25, 2009 01:20 PM | Email ThisVote for Bill Anderson. He has the experience in the Banking Industry to ensure that the voting error rate is minimal and well documented for what does occur (Stefan's pet peeve). It does not make sense to try to elect known partisans to a non-partisan job.
What would be an interesting State law is the requirement to hold re-elections for any election where the balance in the votes is less than the known error rate. And yes that would cost money but would ensure that the right person gets elected.
Posted by: Tim on January 25, 2009 01:44 PMI've spoken with Bill Anderson. He does have an impressive background in the banking industry. I hope that whoever wins this race would consider him for a position as an IT manager at the Elections office. However, the Elections Director position is not merely technical, but also a policy-making and political function. And Anderson does not yet have any experience in those areas.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on January 25, 2009 01:54 PMPosted by: pudge on January 25, 2009 05:26 PM
If we can't expect Obama to deal in 'details' then why should we expect it of Pam Roach?
Posted by: pbj on January 25, 2009 05:27 PMI consider the PDC filings on par with the IRS income taxes or the 'new' state revenue filings where I spent 29 fricken hours to identify the few dozens of cities and counties that I owed 3 or 4 cents each to (July 1's destination based sales tax law). At a certain point the govt. has gone too far in it's requirements.
Posted by: Doug on January 25, 2009 07:52 PMComedian - Yet another profession for which Mr Pope is ill-suited.
Posted by: pbj on January 26, 2009 08:37 AMPosted by: Dear John on January 29, 2009 07:13 PM