AUGUSTA – Overseers of Maine’s Clean Elections system have ordered an unsuccessful Senate candidate to reimburse the state for more than $4,000 and pay penalties of $1,423 more.

The Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices said Loren Bailey of Falmouth would be able to pay the total in monthly assessments of $200.

Wednesday’s commission action closed out a lengthy investigation into Bailey’s campaign that was triggered by the late filing of a campaign finance report and came to include disputes over the propriety of some of Bailey’s expenditures of public money.

Reimbursement of $4,133.89 covers spending on computer equipment, telephone service, personal rent, travel expenses, personal auto repair and $885.35 in meals, according to the commission.

Bailey was authorized to spend a total of $27,948 on his publicly financed campaign under a complex Clean Elections formula.

He had returned $2,057.41 in authorized but unspent funds, according to ethics commission officials, and previously wrote the commission checks of $705.37 for “campaign clothing” and $217.76 for “car repair.”

Commission member Michael Carpenter of Houlton said he believed the panel might be accused of being too lenient in the Bailey case but not of being too harsh.

“Maybe it sends a message,” he said.

Bailey, as the Democratic challenger to incumbent Republican Sen. Joel Abromson in District 27, took 36 percent of the November 2000 vote.

In last year’s legislative races, 134 candidates for the House and Senate ran with optional public funding after agreeing to forgo private donations. Overall spending by the Clean Elections participants was about $865,000, according to William Hain, the executive director of the ethics panel.