HONOLULU — The state Campaign Spending Commission referred two complaints to city prosecutors to decide whether criminal charges should be filed for activities in the 2012 mayoral campaign.
HONOLULU — The state Campaign Spending Commission referred two complaints to city prosecutors to decide whether criminal charges should be filed for activities in the 2012 mayoral campaign.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Thursday that the referred complaints were about the Pacific Resource Partnership Political Action Committee.
Former Gov. Ben Cayetano’s complaint said the committee’s PAC schemed to defeat his mayoral candidacy months before it filed as a super PAC. He says the group didn’t state clearly that expenditures were made to oppose his candidacy and failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses.
In another complaint, Commission Executive Director Kristin Izumi-Nitao said the super PAC failed to report more than $86,000 for money spent to help the 2012 campaigns of Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell and others.
Committee attorney Leroy Colombe acknowledged that mistakes were made, but they argued that referring the complaints for prosecution was an extraordinary step. There was no intent on the committee’s part to knowingly hide the expenditures, he said.
The Pacific Resource Partnership Political Action Committee, also known as the Hawaii Carpenters Market Recovery Program, is a consortium of union carpenters and independent contractors. The alliance set up the super PAC as an independent non-candidate committee, meaning they could spend an unlimited amount on a candidate as long as there was no coordination with the campaign.
The PAC was dissolved in January 2013. But the Hawaii Carpenters Market Recovery Program later set up the group Forward Progress as a separate super PAC that was active in the 2014 elections.