The day before Gary Gillen quit as Fort Bend County Republican Party chairman, he got a letter from the party’s auditor, who said his firm can’t issue an opinion on the local GOP’s 2006 financial statements until party leaders address allegations of election law violations.
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In a Nov. 7 letter obtained by FortBendNow, Null Lairson CPA Christopher Breaux told Gillen that “matters brought up” by Precinct Chairman David Stone in a recent email “need to be specifically and formally addressed and some conclusion reached by management and legal representatives of the party.”
Stone’s email, sent to party officials and numerous members of the county party’s executive committee, details several instances where Stone says party officials failed to comply with election law. Gillen discounted Stone’s contentions earlier this month, and on Thursday characterized them as “slanderous statements.”
However, as the local GOP’s auditors, Breaux said in his letter to Gillen, “we must pursue these issues to conclusion now that we are aware that they exist in order to determine whether the financial reports and related disclosures in the party’s financial statements are materially correct.
“Once these issues are formally addressed by the party’s management and legal counsel, we will then have to revise our audit scope to perform any procedures we consider necessary under the circumstances as prescribed by the Generally Accepted Auditing Standards,” the letter states. “These audit scope revisions may include us retaining our own independent legal counsel to determine the legitimacy of management’s response to these issues.”
The day after receiving Breaux’s letter, Gillen made a surprise announcement at Katy’s Falcon Point County Club before an audience of elected Republican officials, saying that because of irreconcilable differences with “fringe elements” in the party, he and a slate of top party officers had quit, effective immediately.
Others who resigned on Nov. 8 included party Treasurer Richard McCarter, Secretary Nancy Porter, Parliamentarian Dick Hudgins and General Counsel Farha Ahmed.
But Gillen said the resignations had nothing to do with Breaux’s letter. “Not at all,” he added. “As a matter of fact, when the audit is completed, you’re going to find that we did a better job keeping records” than the county GOP has done in the past.
“We were simply not able to do our jobs anymore, because of the contentious nature of the executive committee,” Gillen said.
He complained that “Mr. Stone is having it both ways,” saying Stone has complained that the audit has taken nearly a year and still is not complete, “but his actions are what stopped it.”
In his email, which also was sent to auditor Breaux, Stone alleges, among other things, that Gillen used party funds for in-kind contributions to local and federal political candidates four times in 2006 but failed to report it as required by law.
“Mr. Gillen’s use of party funds to make in-kind contributions to three candidates for federal office in both newsletters in October 2006 required the party to register as a PAC with the Federal Election Commission,” Stone said in his email. “The newsletter did not contain the federally required disclosures (under both the Federal Election Campaign Act and the Internal Revenue Code).”
Stone’s email includes some 24 paragraphs of information on alleged instances in which county GOP leaders failed to adhere to state or federal election law. The email also includes 25 annotations, linked to web pages containing state and federal code “so that people could make up their own minds,” he said.
Gillen said the local party’s executive committee denied a request he made several months ago to form an advisory committee to study Federal Election Code rules. Nonetheless, “I believe we have followed the Federal Election Code. I really believe that’s what the audit is going to say.”
