The Republican Governors Association violated Vermont law by accepting campaign contributions that exceeded state limits, the Vermont Superior Court ruled last week.
In an earlier ruling, the RGA was found to have violated election laws during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, because it failed to register and file campaign finance reports with the Secretary of State.
But the court had delayed ruling on whether the RGA should be able to accept contributions in excess of $2,000.
The RGA argued that its Vermont political action committee, Green Mountain Prosperity, was an independent expenditure-only political action committee, and therefore not subject to contribution limits.
As part of its initial 2011 ruling the court asked the parties for additional briefing in light of then newly decided federal cases.
Federal case law has upheld the right of independent expenditure PACs, often called super PACs, to influence elections as long as their activities are not coordinated with a candidate or political party. Traditional PACs can directly support candidates and parties, but must abide by limits on contributions and must disclose their donors.
In an Oct. 21 ruling, the court found that Green Mountain Prosperity’s actions were controlled by the RGA and that, “But for a separate checkbook, they were one and the same.”
In 2014, the Legislature revised the campaign finance law specifically stating that an independent expenditure-only PAC cannot be closely related to a political party or to a PAC that makes contributions to candidates.
The court will schedule a hearing to determine the RGA’s penalty; a date for that hearing is not yet scheduled. The RGA faces a maximum civil penalty of $10,000 per violation.
The Attorney General’s office has not completed its analysis of how many violations it believes the RGA is liable for, and is still in the process of deciding how much to seek in penalties, said Eve Jacobs-Carnahan, an assistant attorney general who specializes in campaign finance.
“There isn’t a lot of experience or precedent for calculating penalties, so that’s part of the argument we’ll be making to the court,” she said.
