Indicted former Sheriff Mike Carona probably has more important things to worry about than the extra $18,149 that showed up on his 2007 year-end campaign-finance report. But county watchdog Shirley Grindle isn’t letting much about Carona slip through the cracks these days.

She saw the amount added to his report under “Miscellaneous Increases to Cash” and last week fired off a complaint to the state attorney general’s office.

If you don’t see the rest of this story already, click below to get it.

– Martin Wisckol

The explanation given on Carona’s campaign disclosure reads:

“One-time adjustment for discrepancy (pre-dating 1999) in favor of campaign during internal committee audit to reconcile with bank account balance.”

Grindle is not simply outraged at the error, but at the fact that the campaign apparently went nine years without catching the problem.

“You should be checking your ending balances in the books with the balance in your checkbook each time you file a report,” Grindle said. Reports are filed at least twice a year.

Carona advisor Mike Schroeder said the overlooked surplus was an accounting error stemming from campaign account reimbursements from to Carona being listed as “loans” instead of reimbursed expenses.

Last year, Carona agreed to pay a $15,000 fine to the state Fair Political Practices Commission because of $110,750 in reimbursed expenses improperly listed as loans from 1999 to 2003. Grindle had earlier filed a complaint citing the violation.

The settlement also required Carona, now battling public corruption charges, to correctly document those reimbursed expenses. In doing so, the surplus was discovered in the books, Schroeder said.

But the explanation falls far short of satisfying Grindle.

For one thing, the FPPC violations were from 1999 to 2003, while the correction in last year’s campaign finance disclosures says the error occured “pre-dating 1999.” Secondly, Grindle wants to see specific documentation of where the mistakes were originally made.

“They have to identify where the money came from,” she said. “They can’t just mysteriously show an $18,000 increase on their statement.”

While she had the subject on her mind, Grindle had a couple of other problems with Carona’s bookkeeping. One, she believes the $25,000 paid from the campaign account to attorney H. Dean Steward last year was for non-campaign related legal expenses not permitted by state law. And she’s not satisfied with Carona’s accounting of the reimbursements previously listed as loans.

“They’re going to have to explain all of this to someone else,” said Grindle, who believes either the state or the feds will be looking more closely at all of these issues.

In the meantime, Carona is showing a balance of $10,705 in his campaign account. (You’ll notice that would be a deficit if it wasn’t for that surplus that was found.)

Now that he’s out of office, state law (Statute 89519) says there are just a few things he can do with that money:

* Pay off outstanding debt (he has none, according to his report).

* Give the money back to donors.

* Give it to a non-profit charity.

* Give it to a political party.

* Give it to someone’s federal campaign account, or a non-California state campaign account, or a ballot measure campaign account.

– Martin Wisckol

Posted in: Sheriff |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.