Thomas Breen photo
Mayor Toni Harp: “We’re working on it.”
As she continues running for mayor in 2019, Toni Harp has still not revealed the names of donors who gave over $92,000 to her 2017 quest — raising the question about whether the state can enforce its campaign finance laws.
State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC) spokesperson Joshua Foley told the Independent that the state is still looking into the complaint that mayoral candidate Justin Elicker filed against Harp back in March about the latter’s under-reporting of donor names during her 2017 campaign.
“That is still pending,” Foley said about the SEEC’s investigation, which began in March. “It’s an open file, and it’s under investigation. There’s no further comment available.”
Click here to read about Elicker’s initial complaint, and here to download the complaint file itself.
Harp, who lost this year’s Democratic primary to Elicker, announced she would be suspending her campaign but leaving her name on the Working Families Party line on the Nov. 5 general election ballot, and then subsequently “un-suspended” her campaign earlier this week, told the Independent this week that she and her campaign have figured out what went wrong with the 2017 campaign finance reports.
“The online donations were not added,” she said. “Once I have someone that I’ve hired to get all of that worked out, once we get those online donations in, I’m sure you’ll see that everything balances.”
“We’re working on it,” she promised.
Christine Stuart / CTNewsJunkie photo
State Sen. Mae Flexer, D - Killingly.
Democratic State Sen. Mae Flexer, who is the deputy president pro tempore of the state legislature’s upper chamber, and is the chair of the Government Administration & Elections Committee, which is in charge of passing state election laws, said she has long been concerned with the timeliness of SEEC investigations.
“This is something that we’ve been struggling with in Connecticut in many different ways,” she said. “Trying to make sure that we have strong campaign finance laws and a legitimate investigation process that works.”
She said she is not concerned about politicians openly flouting campaign finance laws going unpunished. There are consequences to violating the law, she said, and the SEEC does investigate thoroughly.
But, she added, “we need to find ways to rectify how slow the process can be.”
The two main issues she sees the state enforcement body facing are the volume of issues they get and their ability to triage, as well as the limited staffing resources in their office.
“It’s hard to find a balance between giving them enough resources and helping them build a system that can move forward with these more serious questions in a faster way,” she said, “while recognizing that the current law is used to ask them to investigate things more minor.”
Gary Winfield, a New Haven state senator who has been an outspoken proponent for the state’s Clean Election Fund and public financing in general, declined to comment on the specifics of this particular complaint and investigation into Harp’s 2017 campaign.
But, he added, in his advocacy for campaign finance transparency, he has endeavored to make sure that politicians throughout the state reveal in real time, or as close to real time as possible, how and by whom their campaigns are being funded.
“When that doesn’t happen,” he said, “the public begins to question, even when there may not be a question present.”
As for the SEEC taking six months-and-counting to investigate the complaint, Winfield said that the state legislature has cut funding from the organization time and again in recent years. The legislature is always looking for all different kinds of ways to balance the state budget, he said.
The 2017 campaign finance complaint isn’t the only Harp transparency concern that the SEEC is still investigating.
Elicker filed a second complaint in August alleging that Harp’s 2019 reelection campaign failed to disclose the names of over $5,700 in donations. Foley said that that complaint, too, is still under investigation by the SEEC.
Mystery donors still not revealed ! ehhhh
It does not take 2 years to tell everyone who gave campaign money.. What is she hiding ?...I'm not going to speculate but for me seeing the list certainly might answer some of my questions to why things are in shambles in New Haven...
I'm waiting patiently..her PAC always states how the TH is honest and ethical ....she should prove it.