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When City Council President Nick Mosby filed a campaign finance report ahead of a midnight deadline April 9, his disclosure had obvious errors the campaign left unaddressed.
An amended version intended to resolve those issues, submitted by the Mosby campaign nine days later, might have raised even more questions.
Since the original filing, the Mosby campaign has removed a long series of donations attributed to an Arizona-based payment processor, while a donation from a political action committee the campaign had originally listed at well over the $6,000 limit was revised to $1,000.
In some parts of the amended report, though, the inclusion of previously undisclosed or inaccurate contributions has led to a messy and incomplete picture of the council president’s financial position less than three weeks out from the May 14 Democratic primary election. It has also prompted a letter from state election administrators.
The largest discrepancy in the amended Mosby report, filed April 18, is a $9,281.94 contribution he reported receiving from Baltimore Gas and Electric’s PAC in February — well above the legal limit and a line item that didn’t appear in the original version. A spokesperson for Baltimore Gas and Electric disputed that sum in an email and said the contribution was much smaller: $450.
Matthew Cramer, Mosby’s campaign manager, did not respond Thursday to questions about inconsistencies in the amended report, though the campaign has confirmed to other media that the $450 number is accurate and said it has “consistently worked to correct any issues while also being transparent.”
The Baltimore Gas and Electric contribution has drawn scrutiny from administrators at the State Board of Elections, who sent a letter to Mosby’s campaign earlier Tuesday raising concern about the “potentially excessive” contribution and said any donation over the $6,000 limit must be returned by May 4. The letter, first reported by Baltimore Brew, pointed to the $9,282 line item and an additional receipt of $1,000 from the utility that the Mosby campaign reported ahead of the December filing deadline.
Allen Norfleet, director of the Division of Candidacy and Campaign Finance at the board of elections, gave the Mosby campaign 30 days to submit all receipts, disbursements and bank statements to validate its reporting. In addition to potential excessive contributions, Norfleet’s letter notes more than two dozen possible discrepancies in donors’ addresses, including numerous large donations attributed to different people but the same address or the same street addresses listed in different cities.
The $450 donation is not the only money Mosby received in the latest filing period with ties to Baltimore Gas and Electric. In addition to the PAC contribution, the prominent City Hall lobbyist Lisa Harris Jones, whose firm, Harris Jones & Malone, counts BGE among its clients, donated the maximum $6,000, according to Mosby’s report.
Mosby’s report indicates the lobbyist’s money came in the same day as the PAC donation, but BGE’s filing reports its contribution occurring more than a month later.
A former project manager for Baltimore Gas and Electric, Mosby has lately had a combative public relationship with the company. He attempted to block a deal last year between the utility and Mayor Brandon Scott related to the city’s underground conduit, decrying it as a “power grab.” Neither of Mosby’s opponents in the race for City Council president, Councilman Zeke Cohen and former Councilwoman Shannon Sneed, has reported any donations this cycle from BGE.
Meanwhile, 18 donations totaling close to $50,000 attributed in the April 9 report to Paragon Solutions, an Arizona-based company that processes payments — an apparent reporting error — were removed in the amended version. More than 100 other contributions were added, with the campaign’s total receipts between the two reports rising from $71,053 to $78,664.
Also altered between Mosby’s original campaign finance report and the amended version was a $10,000 donation from Home Depot’s PAC. That $10,000 was revised to $1,000 in the amended report. The $1,000 payment is corroborated in the Washington, D.C.-based Home Depot PAC’s March filing to the Federal Election Commission, and Norfleet said in an email that he would not expect to see the Mosby campaign paying back money on that contribution.
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Obscured by the inconsistencies in Mosby’s reporting is just how much money the council president raised heading into the final weeks of the campaign cycle. The incumbent got a late start to fundraising and reported nearly $200,000 on hand at the January filing deadline.
His original campaign finance report this month listed two different figures for its cash on hand, but Cramer said in an email that the correct figure was $230,235. The amended report states that the campaign has $200,295 in the bank.
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Adam Willis covers city government for The Banner, including the impacts of the large COVID-19 stimulus package that Baltimore received from the federal government.
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