by Karla Ciaglo CTNewsJunkie
(Updated) The Connecticut Government Oversight Committee convened Thursday for a public hearing on multiple election-related bills, focusing on campaign finance reform, election oversight, and the authority of the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC). Lawmakers reviewed seven bills, each addressing various aspects of election integrity, financial disclosure, and regulatory enforcement.
One of the most closely scrutinized proposals was Senate Bill 1406, which seeks to extend the SEEC’s jurisdiction to special taxing districts, which are typically set up in Connecticut municipalities to pay for local fire districts equipment and other costs. The bill gained particular attention following testimony from Rep. John Santanella, D-Enfield, who described what he called a flawed and non-transparent voting process for a referendum on a $2.4-million spending measure in Enfield Fire District No. 1 on Jan. 17, 2019.
Santanella did not explicitly say the process was fraudulent but he argued that it lacked transparency and fairness. He said 112 absentee ballots – which had not been publicly disclosed as an option for voters – were submitted and counted after an in-person vote had already taken place, flipping the referendum’s outcome.
These “112 absentee ballots appeared, all in favor of the measure. This wasn’t in the original public notice. That’s not how elections should work,” he told the committee.
Santanella then described a prolonged legal battle to obtain access to the ballots following the 2019 referendum.
“I spent the better part of a year and a half with the Freedom of Information Commission trying to get my hands on the ballots. And it was an all-out fight,” Santanella said.
Holding up documents during the hearing, he added: “I have them here with me. These are the ballots of the people that actually showed up at the meeting. And the vote tally of the ballots gives you one result. And when you add in the absentee ballots, right? So I have 112 absentee ballots. Every one of them is in favor of the measure.”
Sen. Sudjata Gadkar-Wilcox, a first-term Trumbull Democrat who co-chairs the committee, pressed Santanella and asked what kind of intervention or penalty from the SEEC he was seeking.
Santanella pointed to SB 1406 as a necessary measure to prevent similar issues.
Joshua Foley, an attorney for the SEEC, expressed reluctance about expanding its responsibilities, stating that “there’s no oversight on these special taxing districts, and we don’t even know the full legal implications of adding them under SEEC jurisdiction without a proper study,” he said.
The hearing covered several other bills that could significantly impact Connecticut’s election system.
- Senate Bill 1405 proposes redefining key campaign finance terms, reducing the SEEC’s auditing powers, and requiring legislative approval for SEEC rulings;
- Senate Bill 1407 aims to make the SEEC’s audit process more transparent and subject to a 12-month deadline;
- Senate Bill 1409 focuses on municipal campaign finance disclosures;
- House Bill 7093 introduces stricter regulations for referendum advertising and independent expenditures, and;
- House Bill 7089 incorporates the SEEC’s recommended reforms to campaign finance reporting and enforcement.
Campaign finance oversight became another flashpoint in the hearing, with SB 1405 proposing to reduce the percentage of campaigns the SEEC is required to audit from 50% to 20%. SEEC Legal Programs Director Shannon Kief strongly opposed the change, testifying that “reducing audits to 20 percent will allow financial misconduct to go unchecked.” Kief also noted that “one of the quickest ways to see the demise of public financing is through scandals. Audits protect Connecticut’s reputation.”
Officials detailed previous audits that uncovered financial irregularities.
“We reviewed the documentation of somebody who used a certain consultant, and what we found was the same thing. The consultant said ‘I’m doing the same thing,’ but one committee was charged $10,000 a month, and another committee was charged about $1,000 a month, and there was no clear record of why,” Kief testified. “We interviewed the treasurers, we interviewed the campaign managers, we interviewed the candidates, and nobody could tell us what had been done for sure or what the difference was.”
Another major issue was the SEEC’s handling of campaign contributions, particularly in special elections, during which candidates have complained about processing delays and poor communication.
Tom Swan, executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, voiced frustration, telling SEEC officials, “My treasurer was ready to drive to your office to demand a response.”
SEEC officials blamed an increase in online credit card donations for the problem.
“Seventy-five percent of donations are now credit card-based, and treasurers don’t scrutinize them like they used to,” Foley explained. He said the SEEC is developing new IT tools to help campaigns detect and fix errors before submission.
Automation issues were also acknowledged as contributing to inefficiencies in reviewing campaign donations.
“We were surprised at how much the automation on this part caused treasurers not to do the same kind of deep dive look that they would have done. And so problems that were (previously) caught by them and fixed were not,” Kief testified. She assured the committee that the SEEC is working on new ways to streamline the process, saying “we have a lot of processes in place to try to help with that.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story and its headline has been updated for clarity.
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