Council campaign financial filings are, with limited exceptions, a mess

 I’m going to chalk it up to inexperience. Not stupidity. Not deliberate subterfuge (I’ll leave that to all the conspiracy theorists who flock to the Nextdoor websites). Just plain inexperience. But, gee, you would hope that persons asking for the voters to trust them enough to place them on the city council would at least learn how to file their campaign finance reports on time and correctly.

Two council candidates — District 2 incumbent Tracy Scheel and District 4 candidate Ashlee Bradshaw — apparently failed to even file their first campaign finance report that was due yesterday, although Scheel is exempt because, when she filed to run, she opted for “Modified Reporting,” meaning that she planned on accepting no more than $900 total contributions and spending no more than $900 in seeking the council seat.  Bradshaw filed papers naming a campaign treasurer, the act that requires her to file the proper financial reports on time and she did not complete the Modified Reporting documents with her filing papers.

Two mayoral candidates — incumbent Travis Mitchell and Peter Parcher — turned in a report that doesn’t appear to contain at least one glaring error. However, this is Mitchell’s third campaign and so, by now, he should know how to get this done correctly; and Parcher claimed he only received $20 in contributions and contributions under $90 are not required to be itemized so he has every right not to divulge the source of that $20. (Besides, who cares? It’s a paltry $20. On multiple occasions, I saw drivers hand a $20 bill to panhandlers in the Lakewood neighborhood of Dallas.)

Let’s see, where to start on the rest.

Mayoral candidate Linda Tenorio claimed she spent $1,040.67 out of the $1,300 she received in contributions, but the public is not going to have a clue as to what she spent that $1,040.67 on, because she failed to file the required campaign expense form.

Mayoral candidate David Abdel under-reported his total political contributions by $320 on Page 2 of the report’s Cover Sheet.

In his Cover Sheet, District 4 Tim McHutchion claimed no political expenses but later in his report detailed $740.82 in campaign expenses.

Flores-Cale did not list her individual contributions, but that could be because they were all under $90. I have reached out to her to get the “official reason” and will update this report if and when I receive a reply. (Updated at 11:37 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14) She subsequently contacted me and said as much: "The largest donation I received at one time was $50.00."

For those keeping score on such things, Mitchell reported the most in contributions, $1,790 (not really that high an amount for a mayoral campaign), followed by Abdel ($1,509), Tenorio ($1,300), Flores-Cale ($150), Parcher ($20) and McHutchion ($0). Mitchell’s largest contribution, $750, came from Elite Realty Advisors, a licensed real estate service provider in Kyle. Abdel’s biggest contributor is Anthony Delmonico of Austin who gave the campaign $200. Tenorio’s largest contribution of $500 came from Estella Anderson of Kyle.

Incidentally, these financial reports used to be posted routinely on the City of Kyle’s website, but when I could not find them there earlier today and inquired as to why, I was told I had to file an Open Records Request for them.