Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Patch: Four-Year Gap In Middletown Republicans' Campaign Finance Reports

The Middletown Patch posted an article this morning about the Middletown Republicans not filing campaign finance reports for the past 4 years. This is a big issue and people shouldn't be looking the other way.

And before someone says something .... submitting ELEC reports 4 years after they are due doesn't negate the fact that they weren't filed when they needed to be.... This is still a very serious situation that is being investigated.

From the Patch:

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — There was a missing four-year period where the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) did not have campaign finance reports from the Middletown Republican Committee. 

 The campaign finance reports were missing from the years 2016 through 2020. It was sixteen reports that were missing, from each four quarters of those four years. As of Oct. 21 of this year, all the missing reports have now been filed and are on record with ELEC. 

 Campaign finance reports are vital because they show who has donated to a political party and how the money is being spent. American political parties are required by law to submit them for public record, and to not submit them is a serious violation, as well as a breach of public trust. 

 The Middletown Republican Committee says they filed the reports accurately as required every year. They said they have no idea why ELEC did not have any record of the reports and chalked it up to a clerical error on ELEC's part. 

 "Every report for every quarter was sent by regular mail to P.O. Box 185 Trenton NJ 08625 (ELEC headquarters) as instructed," said a Middletown Republican Party spokesman. "We were informed by a Facebook inquiry that reports were missing. We contacted ELEC and inquired where these reports were placed. They could not find them quickly and asked us to resubmit the reports and they would once again place them in the appropriate quarter. The reports have been resubmitted and upon review are back on the site. We were surprised to learn about this clerical issue as all reports for candidates and the party have always been filed timely." 

It was the job of Alannah Perry, the Middletown Republican Party treasurer, to submit the campaign finance records to ELEC. Perry is the wife of current Middletown Mayor Tony Perry and her father is Gerry Scharfenberger, now a member of the New Jersey Assembly. Before he became an assemblyman, Scharfenberger sat on both the Middletown Township Committee and the Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders since 2016.....


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