Group fighting tax may be fined

Fed Up With Taxes, the political action committee that’s fighting Maine’s new tax on beer, wine, and soda, is facing potential sanctions for missing deadlines to report significant campaign expenditures.

According to Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, the group missed two 24-hour reporting deadlines for expenditures worth $2,403 and $748,628.

The reports were due last Friday and Saturday but weren’t filed until Monday night, he said. The commission imposed a preliminary fine of $10,000 for the larger expenditure and $96.12 for the smaller expenditure.

“Historically, it’s a very large penalty for a late filing by a PAC,” Wayne said Friday. “I’m expecting the PAC to request reduction of that amount.”

The fine is that large because the expenditures were quite significant, he said. Every expenditure of more than $500 made by a PAC must be reported to the state within 24 hours during the two weeks before an election.

Newell Augur, the spokesman for Fed Up With Taxes, said the Portland law firm contracted to file the expenditure reports has admitted to making the filing mistake.

“They have advised us they will reimburse the campaign for the full amount of any costs associated with this,” Augur said.

The No On One coalition issued a news release Friday morning about its opponent’s missed filing deadlines. Ben Dudley, executive director of Engage Maine, a coalition of progressive nonprofit organizations, said that he had been checking Fed Up With Taxes’ expenditure filings every day and said that he wasn’t so sure that the missed deadline could be attributed to the law firm’s mistake.

“Disclosure is the foundation of campaign finance reporting,” Dudley said, adding that missing deadlines is “a way of hiding from your opponents what your strategy is.”

Augur said that his PAC simply missed a reporting deadline by three days.

“Every expenditure has been fully disclosed to the Maine people,” Augur said. “This is yet another instance where the other side is trying to get Maine people’s attention away from the real issue, which is taxes.”

Dudley took exception to this statement.

“When they’re risking access to health coverage for 50,000 Maine people, I would suggest that they’re the ones who are distracting the public from the real issue,” he said.

Wayne said that the commission wouldn’t make a final decision about the amount of the imposed fine until its Nov. 24 meeting.

acurtis@bangordailynews.net

990-8133

The Associated Press contributed to this report.