On the tail of last week’s scandals surrounding the distortion of facts in the personal life story of Texas gubernatorial candidate State Sen. Wendy Davis comes an ethics complaint filed by a citizen with the Texas Ethics Commission (TEC). The complaint alleges Sen. Davis misrepresented her assets on her annual Personal Finance Statements filed with the TEC.
The complaint came to light in an article posted by Kevin Palmer on WatchdogWire.com. The complaint alleges that her failure to make certain disclosures violates the Texas State Code that requires state officers and candidates for public office to make certain types of assets and relationships public as part of an effort to increase transparency and avoid conflicts of interest. Palmer wrote:
The complaint alleges that Davis failed to disclose her ownership of stocks and mutual funds, capital gains made on the sale of those mutual funds, interest earned on several bank accounts, and professional ties to registered lobbyists associated with a law firm at which she is employed. Davis allegedly failed to make these financial disclosures on three of the four Personal Financial Statements she has filed since taking office in 2009.
Davis disclosed ownership of a single stock and two mutual funds on each of her Personal Financial Statements, but reported ownership of several additional mutual funds on her income tax returns for each corresponding year. Davis’ 1040 and 1099-B forms include over 40 pages of proceeds from mutual fund transactions, and reveal that the Senator reported to the IRS that she bought and sold several mutual funds that made capital gains and losses during the years 2010-2012, but did not report any such activity to the state in her Personal Financial Statements for those years.
This complaint comes on the heels of a series of stories about the Davis campaign revealed in news articles last week by the Dallas Morning News and elaborated on by Breitbart News involving discrepancies in Sen. Davis’s personal story.
Should the TEC find Sen. Davis to be deficient in her reports, it can impose a fine of up to $10,000. It may also choose to turn the case over to the Travis County (Austin, Texas) District Attorney’s Office which handles cases related to state officials. Under procedures set by the TEC, Sen. Davis has up to 30 days to respond to the complaint.
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