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In 1989, East Texas chicken plant magnate Bo Pilgrim marched across the floor of the Texas Senate and handed out $10,000 checks to nine senators in an attempt to block passage of a workers’ compensation bill.
The scandal, known as “Chickengate,” is shocking but legal.
But the Chicken Man’s brazenness — what he called campaign contributions that many Texans saw as bribes — caused enough of a stir to usher in a rare era of good government reform.
Lawmakers will soon pass legislation banning the acceptance of donations on Capitol grounds and create the Texas Ethics Commission, an independent agency with investigative powers to enforce the state’s campaign finance laws.
Thirty years after its founding, the commission is powerless: Compliance with Texas ethics laws is largely voluntary, as the commission leaves it up to the Texas attorney general to fine companies for violations.
And that has hardly happened under Ken Paxton, who until recently had to pay $11,000 in fines for ethics violations.
A Texas Tribune investigation has found that the number of politicians, lobbyists and political action committees that have had to pay fines for violating state campaign finance laws has skyrocketed in recent years.
The Texas Ethics Commission issues fines for violations of state campaign finance laws, most commonly when groups fail to file required reports detailing fundraising, expenditures, and personal financial assets. These fines can also be issued for other violations, such as improper spending of campaign funds, failure to register as a lobbyist, or using government resources for campaign activities.
Fines are the primary enforcement tool to ensure that political actors comply with the law, but if fines are not paid, the responsibility for forcing defaulting individuals or entities to pay falls on the Attorney General’s Office, which can take them to court.
Since Paxton took office in 2015, the ethics commission has referred 2,500 unpaid fines to the attorney general for enforcement, according to a Tribune investigation. During that time, Paxton’s office has filed just 175 enforcement cases, or 7% of the cases referred. Most of those cases occurred early in his term. While the attorney general’s office did not file any cases in 2020 or 2021, it has filed 18 in 2022, 25 last year and just one so far in the first half of 2024.
Because of slow enforcement, the number of delinquent candidates and officeholders has skyrocketed. In 2019, 327 filers had to pay $1.3 million in penalties. By June, 750 filers had to pay $3.6 million in penalties.
Anthony Gutierrez of Common Cause, an open-government group, said the trend was worrying in a state with few regulations on its political system.
“Candidates should be telling Texans who they’re accepting money from and what they’re spending it on,” Gutierrez said. “If any of that information is not being disclosed, that’s a big problem. There may be a reason it’s being kept secret.”
Over the years, the most egregious has been Democrat Rep. Ron Reynolds of Missouri City, who has accumulated $77,013 in debt dating back to at least 2014. During that time, he has been cited by the Ethics Commission 20 times for failing to file campaign finance reports or personal financial statements on time. The Attorney General’s office has sued him six times, seeking $34,500 in damages. Despite this and his misconduct convictions, he has been re-elected five times and remains in good standing with the Democratic caucus. In his last report, filed in February, he reported just under $64,000 remaining in his campaign account.
Reynolds did not respond to a request for an interview.
This year, Democratic Rep. Sean Thierry, dogged by accusations that he raised funds from Republican donors in his primary runoff election, failed to file campaign finance reports when they were due weeks before the May 28 election. The omission left Houston-area voters weighing who to support in a race that will call into question Thierry’s partisan loyalties without timely information about his donors.
Thierry, who lost the race, said she missed the deadline because of a death in the family of an aide who was handling the filing. Her July filing, 56 days late, revealed that more than half of the $200,000 she raised came from traditionally Republican donors and political action committees.
Thierry said he paid the $500 fine to the ethics commission, but the commission said he never paid it.
Paxton himself was delinquent until June, when the TEC referred him to the Attorney General’s office for enforcement. Not surprisingly, Paxton’s office has not pursued him for repayment.
He had to pay $11,300 in fines that accumulated from filing three late reports. Paxton paid the fines from his $2.4 million campaign fund on June 25 after the Tribune contacted his office on June 12, 14 and 17, requesting an interview about the process of pursuing delinquent taxpayers.
As a matter of Ethics Commission policy, the commission only refers cases to collect fines that reach $1,000. The attorney general’s office’s strategy for collecting these delinquent fines is unclear. Paxton, First Assistant Attorney Brent Webster, Bankruptcy and Collections Section Chief Rachel Obald, and Assistant Attorney General John Adams did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Paxton has had tangles with the ethics commission before. He refused to allow the attorney general’s office to represent the commission in a lawsuit brought by Empower Texans, a conservative political action committee that donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mr. Paxton’s campaigns, resulting in the commission spending $1.1 million to hire outside counsel. The commission ultimately won the case.
Adrienne Shelley of the left-leaning consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said the lack of enforcement of Texas’ ethics laws will have a significant impact on the transparency of future elections.
“If I’m a political candidate and I want to hide who I’m receiving political donations from, the message candidates are getting now is that this agency has no checks and balances,” Shelley said. “There’s really no risk to me by not filing a report before the election… There’s an incentive to game the system.”
Of the 25 defaulters who owe the highest amount of delinquency, an average of $29,029, the attorney general’s office has sued only six of them. The largest fine payer in this group who is currently in office and has not been sued is State Board of Education member Stacey Childs, who owes $23,417. Reached by phone, Childs speculated that she may not be going to court because she is actively working with the ethics commission to pay off her debt.
Texas has permissive campaign finance laws: It’s one of just 11 states where donors can give unlimited amounts and don’t have to disclose their occupations. Candidates and elected officials can spend donations on almost anything, including flowers for voters’ funerals, international trips and office decorations.
Ethics Commission Chairman Randall Erben and Executive Director J.R. Johnson declined to comment, but they directed the Tribune to a self-assessment report the commission prepared for the Legislature last year, which identified the unpaid fines under the heading of “Major Issues.”
The report suggests the Legislature should create non-monetary penalties for defaulters and give the Ethics Commission more enforcement powers. Other states, such as Missouri and Illinois, bar candidates from running for office until they pay their outstanding fines and bring their disclosure reports up to date. The Ethics Commission report also notes that unpaid fines, if collected, would replenish the state’s general fund.
Thirty-seven states have campaign finance regulators that can impose fines, according to an index compiled by the Coalition for Fairness. Larger states like California, Illinois and New York don’t allow their attorneys general to be involved in enforcing overdue fines, although New York also has a longstanding problem with politicians getting away with it.
It’s unclear how eager the Texas Legislature is for reform. Rep. Reggie Smith (R-Sherman) and Rep. John Bassey (D-Austin), who serve as the chairman and vice chairman of the House Elections Committee, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), chairman of the Senate State Affairs Committee, also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Gutierrez said allowing the Ethics Commission to bring cases on its own would be a “big step” toward restoring accountability to the state’s campaign finance system. Giving the commission more independence, rather than relying on an elected attorney general, would help insulate it from political influence.
“Anytime you have politicians who are subject to the law and who are also subject to the enforcement of the law, it’s a flawed system,” Gutierrez said. “The current ethics commission doesn’t have the power it needs to enforce the law.”
Disclosure: Common Cause is a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is supported in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters have no role in Tribune journalism. A complete list of financial supporters can be found here.
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Correction, July 23, 2024 at 10:35 a.m.: A previous version of this article said Paxton had yet to pay $11,300 in ethics fines. He paid those fines in June, according to his most recent campaign finance reports, filed in mid-July.
