Monday, January 25, 2010

Doug Quelland has an axe to grind

Rep. Doug Quelland (R-LD10) has been repeatedly ordered to vacate his office due to violations of Clean Elections rules. He has appealed each decision against him (and is appealing the latest one, which is why he is still in office) and whether he ultimately leaves office or not, he is running for an LD10 State Rep slot this year.

When he is not expending energy on his efforts to fight Clean Elections' rulings against him, Quelland is using his remaining time in office to interfere with the Citizens Clean Elections Commission (CCEC). Not really representing his district's interests, but that is just a minor detail, right?

So far this session, he has introduced -

HB2588, forcing the CE Commission to turn over evidence from a complainant to a participating candidate within one day (that period of time seems to be awfully short);

HB2589, allowing the CCEC to assess attorney's fees against a complainant when a complaint is found to be false or evidence submitted is fraudulent (OK, this one doesn't seem to be too bad on the face of it);

HB2590, requiring that CCEC advise candidates in every publication that participating candidates have due process and evidentiary discovery rights (Another one that doesn't seem to be too bad at first glance);

HB2591, barring the AG's office from representing the CCEC in an action against a participating candidate (this one has the odor of some serious rancidness wafting from it - removing the ability of CCEC to use the AG's office as its cousel in enforcement actions means that they will have to expend scarce resources on outside counsel);

HB2592, giving defendants in CCEC enforcement actions the same discovery and disclosure procedures and standards as set forth in Arizona's Rules of Civil Procedure (I don't know enough about Civil Procedure to have a comment here).

Think Quelland is still p!$$ed over losing his case, over and over again?

2 comments:

Thane Eichenauer said...

Any sufficiently aggressive government body will eventually give somebody a sufficiently painful welt. It has finally stung somebody who was unwilling to gladly accept the spanking offered by the CCEC.

As for stringent reporting, I don't have much sympathy for the folks who run the CCEC.

Eli Blake said...

Thane,

The issue is whether we can pick and decide which laws we want to follow and ignore the rest.

Either we all live by the same laws, or we live in a society where people only obey the laws they decide they want to obey. And if that's what we have then why even have any laws?