Analysis: Pro bono work needs to be reported as in-kind contribution
The last thing this site wants to do is be another in the innumerable Internet venues assailing Gov. Mark Sanford’s former spokesman for every step he takes. After all, for anyone watching the General Assembly this term, there are a lot more important things to discuss.
However, WR has a short fuse for some things, and one of them is idiocy. Needless to say, when an item is obvious, it will not be ignored.
Let’s go to the audio tape, as Warner Wolf would say. OK, maybe not so much audio, but to the recent archives. A few days ago, Will Folks of FITSNews and Adam Fogle of Richard Quinn & Associates and The Palmetto Scoop went at it about a very old accusation that Folks was doing work, and getting paid by, Sen. Tom Davis of Beaufort.
While Fogle may not have paid attention to anything that has been on the Internet in the past 18 months, it was old news to most people that, at one time, Davis had been the registered agent for Folks’ political consulting firm. It was also known that the two were friendly (and that Davis was involved in the hit list project), so it would only make sense that they worked together.
That is not a big deal.
What may be an issue came up in comments on a post entitled, “More Shocking Gubernatorial Polling!” On it, Folks wrote:
As for Folks’ relationship with Sen. Davis, it is more of a “man crush” than anything else, and his counsel on Tom’s television advertisements (which were actually filmed in Beaufort, Bluffton and Hilton Head Island) was provided on a strictly pro bono basis.
Beside calling the commenter he is replying to retarded, a usual retort that is ironic to people who know a few things, it should be noted that when you provide a service to a candidate, it cannot be pro bono. According to the law, that constitutes an in-kind contribution.
So, when did this contribution happen? According to several Davis reports, there were multiple payments for television advertising.
- 2008.10.17, Starboard Communications, $20,000
- 2008.10.17, Strategic Media Placement, $5,000
- 2008.06.19, Strategy Group for Media, $5,000
- 2008.05.27, Strategy Group for Media, $7,400
- 2008.05.23, Strategy Group for Media, $70,000
- 2008.05.19, Strategy Group for Media, $70,000
Naturally, none of this means that there was an illegal transaction. Folks could have been paid by a number of payments to Starboard, which, more often than not, were referred to by the disclosure reports by the check number, not for why the payment was made. Also, the payment could have come from SGM.
But, either way, the work on behalf of the Davis campaign could not have been pro bono, because such an arrangement is not allowed by S.C. law. It would have required a payment by one of the above firms, or an in-kind disclosure on the form.
As Folks would say, anybody retarded enough to read the S.C. Ethics Commission site would know that.
