Personal Fundraising by Elected Officials

Here's a more interesting story out of Massachusetts, this one from the state Senate. Former state senator Dianne Wilkerson admits having accepted up to $70,000 from friends and supporters in what is being called personal fundraising, that is, raising money to pay off personal debts. She says that the gifts were approved by the state ethics commission and by lawyers. She told the Boston Globe that the state ethics commission told her she could accept the funds "as long as I didn't take a vote in my official capacity as senator" with respect to anyone giving the funds.

The Globe got hold of a letter from the state ethics commission, which said that "Wilkerson could accept gifts 'well in excess of $50' from 'close personal friends' as long as those people didn't have business before the Legislature. If they later did, Wilkerson was advised to publicly disclose that she had received the gifts. The letter said she was also prohibited from receiving gifts from people who sought her help for 'a constituent service.'"

So Wilkerson was not right to say she was only prohibited from voting. If any business came up with respect to a personal contributor, she had to publicly disclose the gift and then, presumably, withdraw from participation in the matter.

According to the article, this isn't what Wilkerson did. "Despite Wilkerson's assertion, one of the people who gave Wilkerson the full $10,000 gift was Arthur Winn, one of the developers of the controversial Columbus Center project in Boston that would span the Massachusetts Turnpike, according to two people who were told about the transactions. Wilkerson voted in favor of state funding for Columbus Center in 2005, according to legislative records, and also lobbied state officials to provide additional state assistance to the developers."

According to the article, the state ethics commission dealt with a similar issue in the past:

A public advisory opinion issued by the commission in 1992 permitted a state legislator to accept donations for a personal legal defense fund, provided that donors did not have business before the Legislature. That opinion also required the legislator to submit a public list of donors to the commission, something Wilkerson has not done.

All this seems reasonable. Gifts are allowable as long as they are given out of love or friendship, and have no possible relationship to government business. It becomes a problem when family members and close personal friends happen to also be contractors, developers, and lobbyists.

It also becomes a problem when officials interpret advisory opinions so that certain requirements are conveniently left out. It's this sort of abuse of the ethics process that makes some people want to prohibit any gifts whatsoever, so officials are left with no wriggling room.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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