Yesterday, we brought you the story about campaign donations Joe Bruno received that appear to be illegal. Liz Benjamin, over at Daily Politics, was kind enough to link to our story. Unfortunately, in a follow up piece posted today, Liz explains how a whiny republican senate staffer emailed her to set the record straight. Here’s what Liz had to:

I received an e-mail from a Senate campaign committee staffer who is well-versed with state Election Law, who called the Rochester blog’s post “misleading,” and explained thusly:

“As you may or may not know, the corporation limit rule is the responsibility of the corporations and is to be enforced by the State Board of Elections.
It is impossible for a candidate committee to know how much and to whom a corp sends donations. When the BOE becomes aware that the limit has been reached, they inform both parties and many of these donations are returned by the candidate, which shows up in subsequent finance filings.

In fact I recognized at least one company listed where I know that the donation was returned because they hit their limit. Further, some of the companies listed arent even Corps.

Some may also be LLC’s or LLP’s or sole propreitorships. I tried posted a response to this on the RochesterBlogger but it will not work, so please if you can correct this misleading link, at least better explain the rules to your readers.”

This reader makes a lot of good points. The problem is that the Board of Elections generally doesn’t investigate anything unless it is formally asked to do so (anyone can make such a request), and doesn’t have the wherewithall - for whatever reason - for hardcore enforcement.

First, each of the corporations I mentioned were listed on Schedule B of Joe Bruno’s campaign finance report. Schedule B is reserved for corporate contributions and nothing else. Thankfully, you don’t need to take my word on it. Check out what the BOE has to say(pg 52 of 80):

schedule B is used to report all monetary contributions from corporations.

If any of the entities listed as corporate donors were classified as LLC’s, they would be properly placed elsewhere on the filing schedule.

While I’m sure Liz meant well in her latest post, it is obvious this republican staffer succeeded in his apparent mission of laying blame elsewhere. In other words, even if the contributions were illegal, it is the corporations, not Bruno, who should be held responsible.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t fly over here in what I’ve termed “reality”. A simple trip to the trusty NYS BOE website should clue this unnamed staffer in:

The person making a contribution, as well as the person receiving it, are responsible to ensure that the limits are not exceeded.

In any event, I’m glad the senate republicans tried to confuse the public on this issue. It beautifully illustrates the dire need for substantial campaign finance reform. I mean, if you can get away with breaking the contribution limits by saying “We just take the money, we don’t have to make sure it’s legal” then it’s clear the contribution laws are nothing more than ink on paper.