A West Texas pastor who used his parish’s resources to campaign for office and several pastors from other churches who donated to him were fined after the state’s ethics commission determined that each violated election law.
The fines, some of which were issued last month, are the latest sanction from the commission following reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, which revealed that three churches donated to the campaign of Scott Beard, founding pastor at Fountaingate Fellowship church, despite state and federal prohibitions on such activity.
Beard, who was fined $3,500, showed a “lack of good faith” in accepting the donations and in posting campaign signs on church property for his unsuccessful Abilene City Council race despite the commission’s warnings against doing so, it found.
“Because the respondent committed extensive corporate contribution violations in defiance of the applicable law, a substantial penalty is required,” the commission wrote about Beard. He did not respond to a request for comment.
In case you were wondering, as I was, whether $3500 was more or less than the amount that was illegally donated:
Fountaingate Merkel Church, Remnant Church and Hope Chapel Foursquare Church donated a combined $800 to the campaign of Scott Beard, senior pastor at Fountaingate Fellowship church, who is running for a seat on the seven-member City Council in Saturday’s election.
And because the fine amount is “up to $5000 or triple the amount in question, whichever is larger,” which would be $2400 in this case, a $3500 fine is appropriate.
I feel like there should be more of a penalty than “we take it away if you get caught”.
Oh boy, I’ll bet that’ll teach him.
I’ll say it again, fines need to be scaled, exponentially, off gross income, of people and corporations. And fucking churches too, no free lunches.
They fined him more than 4x the total donations. How draconian does the punishment need to be?
More. How about we make it 5% of the perp’s gross income for the year? Then increase the fine by 5% for each further infraction.
If he broke the law for $800, I’m guessing $3,500 is probably more than 5% of his income. He’s the pastor of a West Texas church with less than 100 congregants. It took his church plus three others to shore up less than a grand. He probably makes less than $70,000 gross, so you’re likely actually suggesting that he be fined less than the $3,500 he was fined.
What I’d really like to see is his church and any other church that conspired to break the law for political ends be stripped of their tax exempt status.
Seems like a fine should be more for being negligent in your donation sources, and so your campaign accepted a donation you shouldn’t have. It should be a whole different category when you are warned multiple times along the way, which sounds like the case here, and then go on to knowingly break campaign finance laws. I think revoking his church’s tax exempt status, if even only temporarily, would serve as more of a deterrent.
Edit - autocorrect is out to get me today =(
Sounds like some church should not be tax exempt anymore…
