The newly released app is free to download and use by people with an eye on stocks and funds. It boasts a personalized Watchlist, instant alerts, access to the latest business news, key market trends and analysis.
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Mobile Mayor Sam Jones' campaign finance documents riddled with inconsistencies - Everything Alabama Blog
MOBILE, Alabama -- A review of Mayor Sam Jones’ 2011 campaign finance documents shows unreported spending, mislabeled expenses and some checks bearing signatures that appear to be forged.
Jones listed expenses of $32,800 on his annual campaign finance 2011 report, two years out from the city’s next mayoral election.
The Press-Register asked the campaign to supply documentation underpinning the spending.
The campaign provided copies of its annual financial report, receipts, invoices and canceled checks from the campaign’s bank account.
Raymond Bell, an attorney for the campaign, acknowledged some sloppiness in the bookkeeping, but he and Jones denied wrongdoing.
Bell has confirmed that Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich is investigating Jones’ campaign finances.
The documents that the campaign provided to the Press-Register are riddled with inconsistencies. For example, all the checks are signed Donna Mitchell, but at least three of them are written in a hand that bears no resemblance to the others, which suggests that two people wrote checks using the same name.
Mitchell is the director of Jones’ Office of Strategic Initiatives, which is funded by federal grant money. A message left for her at her office went unreturned Friday.
Additionally, the registry of canceled checks provided by the campaign does not square with the expenses listed in the annual finance report.
Read Sam Jones' 2011 campaign finance report [PDF]
Nine of the checks, totaling about $1,600 worth of spending, appear to lack corresponding entries in the finance report.
Other checks appear to correspond to expenses in the report — the amounts are the same down to the penny — but the entries listed on the financial disclosure form bear incorrect vendor names.
Some of the entries on the expense report have no documentation to support them. The check registry supplied to the Press-Register is missing the month of July.
Many of the campaign expenses are supported with documentation. That documentation shows that expenses in 2011 ran the gamut from food and Mardi Gras throws to overhead costs associated with campaign headquarters.
The campaign’s financial report, though, labeled all $32,800 in spending as "administrative." The reporting form included categories for food and lodging, but none of those boxes were checked.
Nearly all of the campaign’s more than $4,500 in spending at Sam’s Club, a bulk retailer, went on food, drinks and common supplies like cleaner, toilet paper and paper towels.
Read Sam Jones' Sam's expenses [PDF]
That would seem to corroborate the explanation that Jones has given for the spending. He said the food and drinks supply his conference room at City Hall and his campaign headquarters, which volunteers use year-round. Jones, who is in his second mayoral term, has said that he expects to run again in 2013.
Nonetheless, a few of the purchases reflected in the documents released to the Press-Register didn’t appear to correspond to any of those activities. They included:
- $18 for a razor and shaving cream.
- $40 for a pair of Kenneth Cole "puffer vests."
- $60 for three fleece "footie" pajamas.
Bell said that a campaign staff member bought those items for personal use but repaid the campaign in cash.
No cash reimbursement appears on the annual campaign finance report. Bell said that is because the petty cash account won’t be reconciled until the next filing, which would be in August, 12 months before the city election.
Such a reimbursement would be reflected on the report as a cash contribution. Campaign rules allow contributions to be accepted only within 12 months of an election.
Because the reimbursement would be shown as a contribution, the campaign is waiting to reconcile the petty cash account on the report, he said.
Campaign finance law does not allow donations to be spent on expenses that would exist irrespective of a person’s candidacy for office.
In addition to Mitchell, another member of Jones’ campaign, Barbara Wolfe, also works for the city in the Office of Strategic Initiatives.
Jones described Wolfe as a part-time campaign staffer who does clerical work.
Neither Wolfe nor Mitchell were hired for their city jobs through the Mobile County Personnel Board’s merit system, which means they work at the pleasure of the mayor’s office.
Casino money ready to flow - Columbus Dispatch
Guards await the arrival of the first players at the downtown Horseshoe Casino Cleveland before its opening on Monday.
Pro-gambling interests have invested heavily on a simple bet: There is money to be made in Ohio.
Construction costs alone for four casinos will approach $1.5 billion. Millions more were spent convincing Ohioans that casino gambling would give the state a much-needed economic jolt — a campaign debt that as of January was still being paid off.
As the state’s first casino opened in Cleveland on Monday, a review by the Dayton Daily News showed that as of January, subsidiaries of Penn National Gaming Inc. and Rock Gaming were still making contributions to the group that led the 2009 campaign to amend the Ohio constitution and allow casinos in Ohio.
Penn National and Rock each will develop two of the Ohio casinos, which will open in stages through the spring of 2013.
“I don’t know the casino business, but I do know a lot of money flows through it,” state Sen. Bill Beagle, R-Tipp City, said. “I don’t know if they would have invested all that money into a campaign if they felt the risks outweighed the benefits.”
The opening of the $350 million Horseshoe Casino Cleveland will be followed by the $320 million Hollywood Casino Toledo, the $400 million Hollywood Casino Columbus and the $400 million Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati.
The building bonanza follows one of the most-expensive issue campaigns in the history of Ohio, as gambling companies sold voters on a promise of jobs if allowed to open casinos in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo.
According to campaign-finance reports filed in January with the Ohio secretary of state, Rock and Penn subsidiaries made $1.8 million in in-kind contributions to the Ohio Jobs and Growth Committee, the political-action committee that led the 2009 Ohio Issue 3 campaign effort. The donation of anything of value is considered an in-kind contribution, such as if a donor pays a consultant’s fee or a printing bill for services provided to a campaign.
Bob Tenenbaum, spokesman for the PAC and for Penn National, which is building the casinos in Toledo and Columbus, said the contributions are paying off obligations incurred during the campaign. State records show those contributions funded campaign strategy, voter outreach and consulting fees.
“This is a significant amount of money, but Ohio is a large state,” said Tenenbaum, whose company also is considering relocating a harness-racing track to Dayton.
Supporters of the ballot issue overall contributed a little more than $47 million in cash and $18 million for in-kind services to the PAC from 2009 through December 2011.
State Rep. Clayton Luckie, D-Dayton, who supported the casino ballot issue and favors allowing slot machines at Ohio’s seven horse-racing tracks, said the campaign contributions were private funds, and the companies’ prerogative to make.
“It was their money. I’m glad they chose to spend it in Ohio,” Luckie said. “Our constituents were gambling anyway in other states. Now, we have more control over it.”
No magic bullet
The billion-dollar bet that gambling companies placed on bringing casinos to Ohio shows how convinced they are there is money to be made here. But, state officials and economists say gambling alone won’t create the economic windfall some expect.
Overall, Ohio’s four casinos and video lottery terminals proposed for the state’s horse tracks are expected to generate revenue of about $2.7 billion a year, said Rob Nichols, spokesman for Gov. John Kasich. The state’s estimated annual take: $475 million a year from the casinos and $425 million from the slot machines, once all are operational.
“It’s helpful. Is it a magic bullet? Absolutely not,” Nichols said. “Ohio can’t expect gaming to lead the state back to prosperity. It’s going to take more than that.”
Peter Vanderhart, a professor of economics at Bowling Green State University, said he doesn’t think the casinos will have a dramatic impact on the state’s economy, although they will keep some Ohioans from spending their entertainment dollars at out-of-state casinos.
“I wouldn’t call it a bold new era,” Vanderhart said. “At the end of the day, these are service and entertainment jobs. It’s not like manufacturing, where you export a product that brings money back.”
Beagle said he thinks Ohioans have reason to be optimistic, as it appears the state is turning an economic corner. While it remains an unknown whether casinos will be the economic engine that supporters predicted, Beagle said the industry is creating jobs.
It was that prospect that drove many voters to support the casino issue in 2009, which was the state’s fifth major gambling referendum in two decades. A telephone survey of 687 voters, conducted a month before the election by the University of Cincinnati’s Institute for Policy Research for Ohio’s major newspapers, found a majority (53 percent) of casino backers cited the prospect of new jobs as the most important reason for their support of the issue.
The promise to voters made by the Issue 3 campaign: the casinos would create 34,000 jobs — 19,000 construction jobs and 15,000 permanent jobs.
Last week, Nichols said the state did not have an updated jobs number for the casinos, and Tenenbaum said it still is too early to tell how many jobs will be created.
But, he added, “We said 1,200 permanent jobs at the Toledo (casino), and we’ve already surpassed that and we’re not even open.”
Social consequences
Beagle said that voters made it clear they were ready for casinos in Ohio when they passed Issue 3.
“I have hope for great success for the casinos,” he said. “I’m optimistic for the economic benefits, but I also understand there are social costs.”
Ohio lawmakers are preparing for the potential social impact of gambling on communities by earmarking funds for addiction services, Beagle said. The version of HB 386, an overhaul of state gambling laws passed by the state Senate on Wednesday, would give the Ohio Lottery Commission discretion on how much video-slot-machine revenue to earmark — up to 1 percent — for gambling-addiction services.
A conference committee of House and Senate members will meet to reconcile differences between the two versions of the bill.
Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, said she’s concerned about the proliferation of gambling in Ohio, beyond the four casinos.
“My sense is that every time we turn around, we’re discussing another venue: video lottery terminals at racetracks, charity card rooms,” Lehner said. “My concern is that we’re seeing an explosion of gambling without paying any real attention to the consequences.”
She said the state needs to pay more attention to gambling addictions and crime related to gaming.
Robert Walgate of the American Policy Roundtable, a conservative, anti-gambling group, has been making the case for three decades that casino gambling and good government don’t mix. Currently, the Roundtable leads a number of plaintiffs in a suit filed to enforce the constitutional language of Ohio Ballot Issue 3.
“Once voters say yes to ‘limited’ casino gambling, the industry takes yes to never mean no,” Walgate said. “Sadly, the governor and Statehouse politicians are only too willing to please the new casino overlords. The voters have been kicked to the curb along with the constitution.”
josmith@DaytonDailyNews.com
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