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By Associated PressThe Miami lawmaker will escape most of a $311,000 fine levied for poor campaign recordkeeping.
MIAMI - An appeals court has erased most of a record $311,000 fine against state Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla and is urging the Legislature to develop a more workable system for reporting campaign contributions.
The Florida Elections Commission fined Diaz de la Portilla but cleared the Miami Republican of criminal charges for sloppy recordkeeping during a six-week campaign in a 1999 special election that moved him from the state House to the Senate.
But the 3rd District Court of Appeal on Wednesday struck down all but 17 of 311 violations found by the commission and ordered his fine recalculated. The court also called on the Legislature to give "more specific guidance" to candidates on how closely they must track campaign money.
If the state wants candidates to do anything more than cursory checks of financial reports, the court said, "a system needs to be devised which is workable given the time demands of a political campaign."
"I'm sure everyone's ears will be pricked up because it affects everybody's elections," state Sen. Anna Cowin, R-Leesburg, Senate Ethics and Elections Committee chairwoman, said Thursday.
Diaz de la Portilla was traveling Thursday and not available for comment. His attorney, Ben Kuehne, said the senator was thrilled with the decision.
The state commission decided Diaz de la Portilla should have audited his treasurer's reports before filing them and found 287 violations on that issue alone. But Judge Gerald Cope wrote that the commission went beyond existing law on questions of candidate accountability and report reliability.
"Such an auditing requirement is nowhere stated," Cope wrote for a three-member panel. "We fail to see how such an auditing or verification requirement would even be physically possible in the case of statewide races for governor."
Cowin promised to look at the court's call for change.
"You always have to have somebody where the buck stops, but the reality is that in a campaign, you pretty much have to trust someone who is doing the finances," she said.
In Diaz de la Portilla's case, his treasurer delegated the money chores to campaign workers who didn't follow instructions.