DFL says Sen. Day paid wife unethically

04/14/2006

The Minnesota DFL Party rapped a leading Republican senator Thursday for using public money to pay his wife for work on his campaign, and called on him to reimburse the state.
DFL Party chair Brian Melendez accused Senate Minority Leader Dick Day, R-Owatonna, of “breaking the trust of Minnesotans and what the public considers ethical campaigning.”

Day dismissed the criticism as “a cheap shot” and defended paying his wife, Janet, $58,800 over 10 years from campaign funds.

“I give my wife $400 a month. ... She does all of the campaign constituent work in Owatonna,” he said. “It amounts to about $4 an hour. She ... takes calls and sends cards.”

In previous years Day often paid his wife $600 a month out of campaign funds. “It’s totally legal,” he said.

The DFL said that because the Department of Revenue reimburses some individual donors for contributions, Day essentially used public funds to pay his wife’s salary. He said about half of his contributions come from people entitled to a refund—individuals giving up to $50 or married couples donating up to $100. The rest came from bigger donors, political committees or lobbyists that were not reimbursed by the state.

There’s no law specifically barring a candidate from employing a family member in a campaign, said Jeanne Olson, executive director of the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, which investigates campaign complaints.

But the board, in a ruling released Thursday on similar issue, noted that state law says money collected for a political campaign “may not be converted to personal use.” The board ruled that a campaign committee may not pay compensation to its candidate running for office.

Another state law says a principal campaign committee “may not commingle its funds with personal funds of officers, members, or associates of the committee.”

Whether such laws could be interpreted to prohibit the employment of Day’s wife was not immediately clear Thursday.

“If a complaint was filed, the board would have to look into this matter,” Olson said.

Whatever the legality of the arrangement, DFLers questioned its propriety.

“Senate rules don’t allow for Senator Day to hire his wife or relatives to work in his Senate office at public expense,” Melendez said. “Minnesotans need to question why it is permissible to use taxpayer dollars to pay his wife for alleged campaign work.”

DFLers also called on Day to prove that his campaign committee sent his wife a 1099 tax form to report the income to the IRS.

“I’m mulling it over,” he said.