Latest news with #CampaignSpendingCommission
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Timothy Lee pleads not guilty, trial set for April
HONOLULU (KHON2) — Local real estate investor Timothy Lee pleaded not guilty to nine counts related to falsified campaign charges stem from allegations of false name contributions, a Class C felony, linked to donations made starting in the spring of 2020. Thompson trial continues Tuesday morning The Campaign Spending Commission referred the case to prosecutors in 2022 after an investigation revealed that Lee, the CEO of JL Capital, allegedly reimbursed employees for thousands of dollars in political donations to candidates running for Honolulu mayor. Download the free KHON2 app for iOS or Android to stay informed on the latest news Lee's trial is set to begin on April 21. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press
12-02-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Hawaii executive indicted for illegal campaign donations
Ala Moana developer Timothy Lee was indicted Friday on nine felony counts of illegally funneling money to Honolulu mayoral candidates in 2020, a rare instance when alleged campaign finance violations could result in prison time. Lee, CEO of JL Capital, the investment firm behind the development of the Sky Ala Moana high-rise, was arrested Monday and released after posting $250,000 bail. He is to be arraigned on Feb. 18. The details of Lee's case harken back to an earlier era of campaign spending cases when felony charges were more common. In the early 2000s, dozens of executives at design and engineering firms were accused of laundering money to the campaigns of Hawaiʻi's most prominent politicians. Many avoided any jail time and paid hefty fines instead. In the last decade, all of the cases forwarded to prosecutors by the state Campaign Spending Commission, which oversees election money in Hawaiʻi, have either resulted in fines or no criminal charges being filed. Lee faces up to five years of prison on each felony count. 'Campaign contribution laws are critical safeguards of our electoral process,' Attorney General Anne Lopez said in a press release. She said her office, which is prosecuting the case, 'will vigorously investigate and prosecute individuals that violate those laws.' In 2022, the office declined to take up another case of allegedly illegal donations made by a lawyer to a candidate for Kauaʻi mayor, citing insufficient evidence. The office declined Tuesday to comment on the rarity of campaign spending cases in the last decade, but credited deputy attorneys general in the Special Investigations and Prosecution Division, an anti-corruption unit created in 2022, as well as the Investigation Division for bringing the Lee case to an indictment by the grand jury. The charges against Lee stem from campaign donations made in March and April 2020 by JL Capital employees to Keith Amemiya and Kym Pine, at the time candidates for mayor. Amemiya's campaign received $5,000; Pine's received $8,000. Neither former candidate has been accused of wrongdoing by prosecutors and campaign finance regulators. Lee later reimbursed employees for those donations in cash and checks, according to the indictment. Donations to mayoral campaigns are capped at $4,000 from any one source. Lee maxed his donations to both Amemiya and Pine around the time he allegedly asked employees to donate to the campaigns, according to campaign spending data. The case first came to the attention of the Campaign Spending Commission via a tip in October 2020 from an attorney representing a JL Capital employee involved in a labor dispute with the company. The employee claimed he was told by Lee to write checks to the Amemiya and Pine campaigns. When the case went before the five-member commission in 2022, Lee's lawyer challenged claims made in the state's investigation that alleged Lee asked the employees to donate to the mayoral campaigns. However, at a hearing in April 2022, the lawyer, David Minkin, seemed to acknowledge that Lee reimbursed employees for those donations, which is illegal in Hawaiʻi. 'Mr. Lee is fully aware of the consequences and fully understands he cannot reimburse people months later for contributions made on their own behest,' Minkin said at the time. In the end, the commission voted unanimously to send the case to state prosecutors. As a condition of his release, Lee was ordered not to contact Ka Wai Norman Chan and Tetsuaki Saihara, two of the employees. He was also ordered to turn over any firearms, ammunition and firearms licenses to police, and must surrender his passport at arraignment. Lee is still listed as the manager and agent on JL Ala Moana LLC's business file with the state, current as of Jan. 2. The company's website, which once displayed its executive team and portfolio of properties in the Ala Moana neighborhood, appears to have gone dark earlier this year. It now just displays a black screen with the company name. The indictment comes at a time of renewed focus on campaign donations. Randal Lee, a retired judge and former prosecutor, led investigations of straw donations in the early 2000s. He said those cases, involving people who donated in the names of family members and employees, have become rarer after investigations exposed the techniques people used to conceal donations. And campaign finance law at the time didn't make it easy for prosecutors, who could not take up cases themselves and had to wait for a referral from the commission, which has historically been short-staffed, Lee said. After two former legislators were caught taking bribes in 2022, the law changed, allowing prosecutors to independently pursue campaign spending cases. That year, lawmakers also created the new anti-corruption unit in the Attorney General's Office. Strong enforcement is necessary to keep the donors and campaigns in line, Lee said. 'The only way to keep people from violating campaign spending laws is to have some punitive action taken against them,' Lee said. Gary Kam, general counsel of the Campaign Spending Commission, said commission staff are often occupied with just ensuring that spending reports come in on time and following up with campaigns that fail to file. Having more staff and an investigator could help the commission find other instances of bundled donations. 'If we can get more staff, maybe we could have someone who looks at those kinds of circumstances,' Kam said. State lawmakers in the current session are advancing measures to increase staffing at the commission. The agency currently has just five employees, no investigator, and was tasked with monitoring nearly $10 million in donations in 2024. ___
Associated Press
06-02-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Bill to close pay-to-play loophole in Hawaii moves to full House
State legislators are seeking to close a 20-year-old loophole that has allowed government contractors to donate to politicians despite a law that purports to ban such contributions. Last year, an investigation by Civil Beat and The New York Times found that people with ties to contractors contributed $24 million to political campaigns — about $1 in every $5 donated since 2006 — and the donations often coincided with key decisions by lawmakers regarding the contracts. On Wednesday, lawmakers moved closer to closing the loophole, which banned donations from companies with government contracts, but not from company officers or their families. The House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee voted unanimously to send House Bill 371 for a full vote in the House. The legislation would prohibit campaign contributions from officers and immediate family members of contractors as well as recipients of government grants. State and county agencies would be required to send the Campaign Spending Commission lists of contractors as well as their officers and immediate family members. The commission, which is tasked with regulating political donations in Hawaiʻi, would use that information to enforce the new prohibitions. Rep. David Tarnas, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said he included that provision to help address concerns from lawmakers, who were worried about accepting illicit contributions in the future. 'We're trying to make the information available to the public and to the candidates,' Tarnas said. HB 371 goes further, banning people tied to contractors from donating to noncandidate committees, which in Hawaiʻi could include super PACs that have no limits on fundraising from any one source and no limits on spending to support or oppose candidates. Experts have said the provisions targeting PACs are likely to be challenged in court. The prohibitions would last for the duration of the government contract. Any donations made in violation of the new law would need to be returned to the donor in 30 days. Otherwise, those funds would go to the state. Efforts to close the loophole and ban donations from company executives and family members failed in the last two legislative sessions. Lost In Translation Tarnas chose to advance HB 371 out of his committee over another proposal that promised more sweeping reforms. That bill, House Bill 894, sought to ban prospective bidders, subcontractors, and pre-qualified bidders from contributing to campaigns. Tarnas, who sponsored the bill, based it on laws from Connecticut, but found that not everything from Connecticut could work in Hawaiʻi. For example, Hawaiʻi doesn't have a statewide system for prequalifying contractors. 'It just doesn't translate well to our system,' Tarnas said during a hearing on the measures. State Procurement Officer Bonnie Kahakui told lawmakers that provisions in the Connecticut proposal requiring agencies to send lists of contractors and bidders to the Campaign Spending Commission could be 'administratively burdensome.' For example, Kahakui estimated that state agencies received nearly 8,000 proposals last year in response to solicitations. She suggested an alternative: Instead of sending the commission that information, the agencies could collect information on officers, immediate family members and subcontractors of winning bidders and post them to a public database. 'It could be done,' Kahakui told lawmakers. 'It would just take more effort on the agencies' part to collect that information from vendors.' Lawmakers are separately proposing to increase staffing for the Campaign Spending Commission, which is tasked with regulating millions of dollars in campaign funds every election cycle. Gov. Josh Green has included funding in his budget proposal to add staff to the commission, which currently has just five employees. A separate bill would give the commission, which is tasked with investigating campaign spending violations, an investigator. It currently doesn't have one. Craig Holman, a Washington D.C. lobbyist and expert on campaign finance, applauded the proposals. 'It sounds like a very good law,' he said in an interview. But he said that Hawai'i also needs to include provisions in contracts that would allow the government to cancel a deal if a contractor violates the campaign spending provisions. The threat of losing potentially lucrative contracts should be enough to force businesses to police themselves, Holman said. Targeting Super PACs Would Be Difficult Efforts to end contractor contributions to super PACs will likely run into legal challenges related to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling. Citizens United established that business entities have rights to political speech and essentially defanged states' attempts to limit spending by super PACs, which are called independent expenditure committees in Hawaiʻi. For example, even with stronger restrictions than those in Hawaiʻi, government contractors in Connecticut continued donating to campaigns through outside super PACs, according to media reports. Jim Hochberg, a lawyer who challenged Hawaiʻi's campaign spending laws shortly after the Citizens United ruling, called the Legislature's latest attempt to prohibit donations from contractors 'ridiculous.' 'If I was still in Hawaiʻi, I'd sue them,' Hochberg said, adding that political speech 'is the most important speech we have.' Since 2012, independent expenditure committees in Hawaiʻi spent more than $12.4 million to sway elections, according to data from the Campaign Spending Commission. Some of those efforts have been funded by government contractors. In 2016, Dennis Mitsunaga, president of the engineering firm Mitsunaga & Associates, provided financial backing to a super PAC that supported Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell's reelection campaign. Mitsunaga's family members also contributed to the PAC, called Save Our City. The PAC and its chairwoman at the time, bar owner Sarah Houghtailing, were fined $15,000 in 2019 for misreporting the group's flow of money. Mitsunaga was acquitted of federal charges last year. In 2020, seven employees of the engineering firm R.M. Towill, a major state contractor, contributed to a PAC set up to support Democratic candidates for the House. The company also has its own PAC called the Kilohana Corporation, which contributed to the campaigns of more than three dozen candidates between 2008 and 2023. Holman, the D.C. lobbyist, acknowledging that the outside spending restrictions in the bill could be challenged in court, recommended that lawmakers include a severability clause in measures this year. Such a clause would keep the new bans on contractor donations intact even if the provisions on PACs are deemed illegal. ___
