2006-08-03 Board of Ethics Minutes Special Meeting kd

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campaign piece rather than a legislative newsletter. So they in enacted rules in the State legislature to say, no, if you are going are going to mail a newsletter it is going to have to be strictly paid with the legislative allowance. Or if you're going to send a separate newsletter paid by your campaign funds, it has to be paid strictly by campaign fund. But you cannot take a little bit of this money and a little bit of that and spend it on the same piece because they were concerned that the lines would get blurred in terms of what was an official legislative piece and what was a campaign piece. AL: Okay, thank you. RW: So, we are getting way too much detail here from (inaudible) on this thing. I think the selling point here is - -for you to get it - -that your link to the campaign website with the Government stationary was... GS: Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a further statement. If you will allow me, that whatever your rulings are in this body, I would ask that you rule two things. First of all, the first mailing was an appropriate use of taxpayers' money, and that communication was authorized. The second mailing, although identical to the first, did contain reference to a website that was not appropriate. That I did not intentionally and it was an inadvertent situation, because although when I did get that information over the cell phone from my secretary, I really did not focus on that addition. It escaped me. And therein lays the truth of the whole matter. RW: And that sounds like logical way to proceed if the Board feels... WJ: I do have a couple of questions. RW: Sure, shoot. WJ: Your second mailing. Exactly how many people received this second mailing? GS: We sent out 400. BLT: There is actually a clarification. And that is because Mr. Safarik sent 400 pieces down to be mailed. But they had not all gone through the process and the complaint came in and the County Clerk, when the complaint went to her, immediately stopped the rest of the mailings from going out, because she did not want to, if there was a problem, she did not want to make it bigger that it had to be. So there were actually only 122 pieces that were mailed in July because the County Clerk stopped the rest from being mailed out. GS: Well, I didn't realize that. WJ: Well, I never won anything in my life but I was one of the fortunate few that got one. (Laughter) RW: Got your lucky stories. 14