Eleven donations totaling $40,000 made by corporations somehow ended up listed as individual contributions from a Baltimore movie producer on the Web site for the Maryland State Board of Elections, a spokesman for Governor-elect Martin O’Malley says.
The deputy state administrator for the Board of Elections said the mistake could be as simple as the campaigns’ software not properly communicating with a program used by the state.
“If the format is wrong or off by just one field, then everything is off or wrong,” Ross Goldstein said. “I’m not saying that that’s what happened here … but that’s certainly a possibility.”
Greg Mielcarz, spokesman for 70-year-old James G. Robinson and his Morgan Creek Productions, called the state’s database “absolutely wrong” and said business donation receipts from the campaigns of O’Malley and Lieutenant Governor-elect Del. Anthony Brown would show a different story.
“Obviously it’s the database that’s wrong,” Mielcarz said from Morgan Creek Productions’ Los Angeles office.
Rick Abbruzzese, a spokesman for the O’Malley-Brown transition team, on Wednesday produced a list of 16 corporations with links to Robinson that had given a total of $124,000 to the campaign, a figure that includes the funds believed to be mislabeled by the state. Abbruzzese said no contributions were made in Robinson’s name.
“It is in everybody’s best interests that the data that’s reported by the campaigns appear accurately on the state Web site,” Rick Abbruzzese said.
State campaign finance law says an individual can give up to $4,000 to a particular campaign during the four-year election cycle, and no more than $10,000 to all campaigns. The attribution on the board’s Web site makes it appear as if Robinson exceeded that limit by $32,000 — an amount that caught the attention of a government watchdog group.
The executive director of Common Cause Maryland had sent a letter to the Maryland Office of the State Prosecutor on Nov. 15 asking for an investigation into Robinson’s perceived individual donations as well as contributions from multiple corporations registered to Robinson’s penthouse condominium in Baltimore’s Otterbein neighborhood.
“If the data entry explanation is correct, then that’s fine,” said Bobbie Walton. “That part of our complaint should be dismissed.”
Walton said government agencies don’t look at reports often enough and said she still wants the state prosecutor to investigate the corporate contributions.
“We have established a set of laws that we don’t enforce,” Walton said.
Goldstein said the board does review reports, but has very limited resources. He said the state will work closely with the campaign committees to sort out the situation of the miscategorized donations.
“Obviously this is something I’m sure they’re going to want to have fixed,” Goldstein said, “and we’re going to want to post correctly as well.”
