White Hall Republican Stu Soffer said Monday that he filed a complaint with the IRS against a nonprofit group that has declined to recover funds that were improperly used to boost the campaign of Republican state Treasurer Dennis Milligan.
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network employed Milligan's 2014 campaign manager, Jason Brady, as a lobbyist for several years, including during the election. The nonprofit group says Brady violated its internal policies by working on Milligan's campaign during work hours and by using office resources to promote the candidate.
Brady is now Milligan's deputy chief of staff.
White Hall Republican Susan Over said she's also filed a complaint with the Arkansas Ethics Commission. She accuses Brady of filing false lobbyist reports for the period from July 2013 through December 2014.
Spokesmen for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and Milligan declined to comment Monday on the complaints. Brady could not be reached for comment by telephone.
Milligan is a former Saline County circuit clerk from Benton and a former chairman of the state Republican Party.
Soffer and Over are members of the Jefferson County Republican Committee, which voted to call for Milligan's resignation on the same day in late May that committee member David Singer of White Hall, the former outreach manager for Milligan, filed a defamation lawsuit against Milligan's chief of staff, Jim Harris.
Soffer's complaint with the IRS speculates that Brady used about $50,000 in American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network labor, office email, furnishings and equipment as he managed Milligan's primary and general election campaigns over an 18-month period "while on duty" at the nonprofit group.
Soffer said he made "a wild guess" on the amount based on Brady's $65,000 salary with the nonprofit group and the cost of benefits. He also guessed at the use of the nonprofit group's resources, including office space and equipment, because he couldn't get that information from the cancer society.
Soffer said he filed the complaint "with regret" because "efforts to have the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network officials do the right thing to recover donors' money spent by their employees on two partisan political campaigns or at least file criminal charges against the former employee have been unsuccessful."
When the questions were raised in late April, Milligan said he and Brady would make a donation to the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network to compensate it for any costs resulting from Brady's campaign work. In June, officials with the nonprofit said they received the donation, but that they planned to return it. Neither Milligan nor the nonprofit's spokesman have revealed the amount of money that had been sent.
In July, a spokesman for the nonprofit group, Ray Carson, said it was "able to verify less than $20 in direct costs as a result of the misuse [of the nonprofit's resources by Brady], but were unable to quantify indirect costs, such as misuse of our email system. We cannot quantify the time Mr. Brady spent on personal business."
The group doesn't plan to ask Brady to pay back money because "any effort at reimbursement would almost certainly necessitate additional resources that far exceed the costs themselves," Carson said in July.
In her ethics complaint, Over said Brady conspired with Milligan "to ensure his name and activities on behalf of Mr. Milligan were not reported in campaign reports, which, in turn, would have linked Mr. Brady to false lobbyist reports he filed" as a lobbyist for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
Her complaint says that Brady asked Shaun McFarland of campaign contractor Your Ad Team in a March 11, 2014, email to "please include this bill for $308.96 in your next bill to the campaign for reimbursement. After you receive a check from the campaign, would you mind reimbursing me?"
The complaint also said Brady told then-campaign treasurer Rick Meyer in the email that "sorry to ask for this, but as you know, for my job security, I can NOT be listed anywhere on a campaign contribution report."
Milligan's campaign says it amended its campaign reports to disclose the reimbursement after questions were raised about its omission.
Milligan briefly gave Brady a paid leave of absence after evidence surfaced in late April that Brady had been doing campaign work during his hours at the nonprofit. After a review, Milligan had Brady return to work, saying there was no evidence that Brady had broken campaign laws.
In August, attorney and left-leaning blogger Matt Campbell of Little Rock filed a wide-ranging ethics complaint against Milligan. At that time, a representative for Milligan said that "we are confident Mr. Milligan will be vindicated at the end of the day."
In March, Milligan agreed to pay the office of Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge a $1,000 penalty for violating the state's nepotism law when he hired his cousin for a $63,000-a-year job at the treasurer's office. He also reimbursed the state $6,941.62 for the pay earned by his cousin, Sam Swayze.
Metro on 10/13/2015