Thursday, January 28, 2016

Why is the PDC stalling on the Rivers case?

Several months ago, I contacted the PDC via phone and asked them to informally look at the amount of money she was reporting as "raised."  I was told that whatever happened took place on February 10, 2015 (during session) when approximately 30 forms were filed and the amount of money she was reporting went from about $7000 to $175,000.

What's problematic here is not what you might think: that she found a way to game the system to inflate her amount of money to scare off possible challengers.  After all, even now, she has, if that number is to be believed, raised more money than any other legislator or legislative challenger in the entire state.

No, the problem is that in the first phone call to the PDC, the investigator I talked to indicated there was an obvious problem.  And they then proceeded to do absolutely nothing about it.

The problem is that Rivers knows and HAS known that the figure is false and has, apparently, made no effort to correct it.

There are only one of two possibilities: Rivers lied to the PDC so much that the computer couldn't handle it... or there is some sort of a computer glitch.

Either way, Rivers' number, which leads EVERY legislator and legislative candidate IN THE STATE is no where near accurate.

The problem is that due to the PDC's inability to get the number fixed, I filed a written complaint in early October and heard nothing.

I refiled the complaint on 23 November 2015 and again, heard nothing.

I contacted the PDC office via email on 31 Dec 15 pointing out that I had filed this complaint against Sen. Rivers and I received my first reply, that indicated the investigator handling the case would be back on January 6.  He contacted me on January 6, telling me that once he made a definite decision on how to proceed on this case, he'd let me know.

Weeks have gone by, and save for an acknowledgement of receiving my thanks for looking into this, I've heard nothing.

The issues are clear:

1.  Can PDC computers be manipulated in any way?

2.  Why didn't Rivers act to address this issue?  There's no way she doesn't know; there's no way she hasn't known for almost a year that this number is flat wrong.

3.  Why has it taken, literally, almost 4 months of formal requests and months before that after an informal request to address this issue?

4.  What's going on here?

My conclusions have been verified by an accountant; there is simply no way that figure showing ($255,000 or so) is legitimate.

The figure showing is no where near the true amount she's raised, possibly as much as $170,000 in overstated amounts.

This whole thing stinks.  And if it doesn't get resolved soon, I will raise it with the Ethics Board AND the AG's office.

We MUST be able to believe in the accuracy of the PDC in properly reporting who is getting money from who and how much.  Otherwise, what good are they?

No comments: