Truth or Dare

According to a tip from the Outer Banks, the NC Association of Realtors has been desperately searching for the Lost Colony of Dare County realtors who may have been negatively affected by the Transfer Tax that has been successfully implemented in Dare County.

NCAR and, Wake County realtors in particular, have been bombarding their Dare County colleagues with requests to write letters saying the Transfer Tax has hurt their business. All of the realtors contacted by the source say the Transfer Tax has had no impact on their business.

Meanwhile, the NC Realtors PAC, has failed to account for $127,600 in in-kind contributions that it did not report for two years. In March 2007 the NC Realtors PAC submitted revised summaries for 2005 and 2006 to the State Board of Elections but failed to submit revised data files itemizing the newly reported in-kind contributions made over the two year period. SBOE informed the PAC of this deficiency June 29th. As of writing the revised data files have not been posted at the SBOE website.

According to the SBOE, the parent entity of a PAC can make a reasonable in-kind contribution to a PAC for administration costs without it being considered a corporate or excess contribution. Without itemized reports it is impossible to determine whether the PAC is in compliance.

In addition, the PAC's data file for the first half of 2005 was never posted because the large file was caught in a spam filter. A review of other NC Realtor PAC files has uncovered some contributions to candidates that were either never reported by the candidate or reported without attribution. Without the full report it is impossible to cross reference. It's not just the NC Realtors. Another large PAC, the NC Medical Society State PAC, has no data on file for the 2006 1st quarter.

Because the SBOE concentrates its audit capacity on candidate reports before addressing PACs, the responsibility to flag non-compliant PACs falls to watchdogs like Democracy NC and more frequently blogs like BlueNC. Semi-annual reports for the first half of 2007 are due to be filed about a week from now. It will be up to you all to cast a wary eye on these reports to see who has been naughty and who has been nice.
 

Update: The SBOE notified the Medical Society today and loaded the missing data file to the SBOE database this afternoon. It should appear on the SBOE website tomorrow. Still waiting for the NC Realtors PAC files.