Electronic filing for Joplin R-8 Board of Education candidate Lynda Banwart and Joplin City Council candidate Michael Woolston with the Missouri Ethics Commission opened just long enough for the candidates to accept contributions larger than $5,000, which according to Missouri state law have to be filed with the Commission within 48 hours.
Mrs. Banwart received $13,400 from her husband, J. Christopher Banwart last week and Woolston received $10,000 from the Missouri Realtors PAC.
After that, the committees were terminated, as far as electronic filing is concerned, a spokeswoman for the Ethics Commission told me. Candidates for muncipal and school board elections in communities with less than 100,000 have the option of filing their reports either at the courthouse or online with the Ethics Commission.
If Banwart, Woolston or any of the other candidates who are not filing online should accept another contribution of more than $5,000, that will have to be filed with the Commission as a 48-hour report, the spokeswoman said.
This is a situation that has seldom arisen in Joplin politics since the local races usually do not attract this much money.
2 comments:
Interesting concept. Buy the election, then take down the evidence. Now it will be necessary to drive to the courthouse in Carthage to see what our cash-endowed candidates are up to. That they are already being so manipulative and less than transparent tells me that a vote for either one will just be a vote to keep going in the same horrible direction that city and the school are already headed.
It should be noted that even though the committee is listed as "terminated" on the Missouri Ethics Commission website, the contribution remains visible on the website.
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