FortBendNow.com

The Texas Ethics Commission has fined Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey $1,500 for violating campaign finance laws.

The fine and an accompanying order were issued July 15 in response to a lengthy sworn complaint that mostly covers the election cycle in 2006, in which Healey beat attorney Larry McDougal in the March Republican Party primary.

The order doesn’t disclose who filed the complaint.

Healey said Thursday afternoon the ethics violations were mostly the result of math errors and characterizing certain purchases as being for “auction items” when the commission sought a more detailed description.

He said the math errors were “easily identifiable” because he included all the data needed to check the math, “so it’s not like I was trying to hide anything.”

Nonethelss, “that doesn’t change the fact that several of the complaints were supported by findings of the Texas Ethics Commission,” Healey said. And once those findings were brought to his attention, he filed amended reports, he added.

Healey also said he hired an attorney who consults on state campaign finance and ethics matters, to help assure that his filings were accurate and legally correct.

While finding five violations against Healey, the commission found in favor of the district attorney in several instances in which the anonymous complainent alleged more serious offenses, such as converting political contributions to personal use.

In its July 15 order, the commission ruled that, contrary to law:

- Healey “failed to provide a sufficient description of the purpose of political expenditures,” and said Healey listed himself and his wife as being paid on three occasions, “instead of disclosing the actual payee.”

(Healey told the commission one of those expenditures represented money used to buy “items for goodwill among campaign supporters, for a future political auction and to construct campaign signs.”

The second of the expenditures was “to purchase appreciation gifts for his Jan. 19, 2006, fundraiser workers and volunteers.”

The third, Healey told the commission, “was to account for assorted items which were collected over a period of time and placed in his fundraiser’s auction.”)

- Healey failed to include a $2,204.78 in-kind contribution in totaling contributions on his January 2006 report.

(Healey told the commission the amount wasn’t included in the total contributions “due to an error of omission.”)

- Healey failed to properly disclose $3,700 in the “total political expenditures” space on his eight-day pre-election report for 2006.

(Healey told the commission “this was an inadvertent arithmetic error.” He has since filed a corrected report.)

Healey said Thursday that wording in the ethics commission order made it sound like he had under-reported his political expenditures. But the truth is that his math error made it appear that he’d spent $3,700 more than was actually the case.

- Healey filed campaign finance reports between 2004 and 2006 that included print-outs from a computer spreadsheet instead of official forms required by the TEC.

(Healey told the commission his print-outs “provided the relevant fields of information” and “conforms to the same format and paper size as the form prescribed by the commission, and that he thought the presentation was clear and useful to the public.”)

- Healey failed to provide an adequate description of $4,150 in in-kind political contributions in 2006, calling them “auction items for a fundraiser.”

The ethics commission also said Healey technically violated a section of the Texas Election Code because he failed to fill out the blank stating the elected office he was seeking. The commission acknowledged that “error was minor.”

(Healey told the commission he believed the descriptions were adequate.)

In the order, which Healey signed, he neither admitted nor denied the commission’s findings.

However, he also consented to the order, and acknowledged points of law that the commission said he violated.