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Ethics Board Files Complaint Against Clerk of Quarter Sessions

By Brian Harris

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

The Philadelphia Board of Ethics is seeking $3,000 in civil penalties against Clerk of Quarter Sessions Vivian Miller for an alleged campaign finance violation.

The board said in its petition filed last week with the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas that Miller violated a campaign finance rule created in 2003. The rule prohibits candidates for city elected office using more than one political committee while seeking office.

The petition said that when Miller ran for re-election as the clerk for the city's criminal cases in 2007 Miller used both the Committee to Re-Elect Vivian T. Miller and the 51st Democratic Ward Committee to expend money in support of her candidacy. Miller is the ward leader for the 51st Ward.

The petition said Miller used the second political committee to make more than 30 percent of her recent expenditures on her re-election campaign in the 2007 primary and almost all of her expenditures on her re-election campaign in the 2007 general election.

"When a candidate for city office uses multiple political committees to influence her election, she violates the single committee rule," the petition said. "In addition to violating the law, a candidate's use of multiple political committees to influence her election makes it more difficult for the public and the Ethics Board to track the flow of money used by the candidate to influence her election and gives the candidate an unfair advantage over those who 'play by the rules.'"

The campaign finance law is a strict liability law, the board does not need to prove that Miller knowingly or intentionally committed a violation, according to the board's memorandum of law.

Shane Creamer, executive director of the board, said the petition against Miller is separate from other criticisms that have recently been leveled against Miller regarding the functioning of her office.

A ward leader can lead a ward with a PAC and not violate the single committee rule by not using the ward PAC to influence their election, Creamer said.

Miller's counsel, Samuel C. Stretton, said that Miller will challenge the single committee rule by arguing that the rule is pre-empted by the state campaign finance regime. Stretton also said Miller did not do anything wrong.

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on January 25, 2010 (boomark / email).