Campaign-finance board fines Kelliher, DFL

House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher must pay a $9,000 penalty for getting donors to cover the cost of a DFL Party voter database, the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board ruled today. It also ordered the DFL to pay a $15,000 penalty.

The fines were announced Wednesday (pdf) after a closed-door hearing Tuesday.

The board found probable cause that Kelliher’s campaign “violated the prohibition on soliciting and accepting earmarked contributions … when it solicited, accepted and transferred contributions to the DFL for the purpose of benefiting the Kelliher Committee.”

The board also found the DFL “violated the prohibition on accepting earmarked contributions … when it accepted contributions for the purpose of benefiting the Kelliher Committee.”

Last, the board said both the Kelliher campaign and the DFL broke another campaign-finance law by redirecting contributions to Kelliher through the party.

But the board couldn’t sort out whether the arrangement led to Kelliher exceeding state contribution limits:

Based on the evidence, it is unclear whether earmarked contributions to the DFL would have put the Committee over its limit on contributions from special sources if those earmarked contributions were also considered contributions to the Committee. For the reasons stated above, the Board declines to determine if the Kelliher Committee exceeded the 2009 aggregate contribution limit as a result of these transactions.

Kelliher and the DFL were cooperative with the board’s investigation, but both were aware of state law, and avoiding those laws were, in the board’s judgment, the “underlying purpose” of the arrangement.

The issue erupted in early December, when rival DFL gubernatorial candidate state Rep. Tom Rukavina cried foul. The Republican Party of Minnesota filed an official complaint, prompting the campaign-finance board review.

Kelliher acknowledged her “mistake,” and her campaign belatedly picked up the cost of the DFL database.