Chief Deputy Idaho Secretary of State Tim Hurst said the Secretary of State’s office will be looking into an apparent attempt to evade campaign finance limits by Doyle Beck, who gave a series of $1,000 contributions to legislative candidate M.C. “Chick” Heileson from related companies that Beck owns. “We’re going to look at it,” Hurst said today.

He said when Idaho’s Sunshine Law was amended in 2006 to apply contribution limits – which are $1,000 per primary or general election, for contributions to a legislative candidate from any individual or corporation – to aggregate contributions from related companies, unions or other entities, this is the type of activity that was foreclosed. “It’s so people can’t get around the limits by using companies,” Hurst said, or trade associations or other entities, “that are all owned and controlled by the same person.”

The bill, HB 415 in 2006, was proposed by then-Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, and passed both the House and Senate unanimously; it was signed into law on March 11, 2006, by Gov. Dirk Kempthorne. The bill’s Statement of Purpose said, “The purpose of this legislation is to amend the Sunshine Law to clarify that campaign contributions from affiliated entities be aggregated for the purposes of contribution limits.  Other states with contribution limits and the Federal Election Campaign Act both contain similar provisions.  Contribution limits are meaningless if splinter groups are each allowed a separate contribution limit.”

The bill was proposed after eastern Idaho businessman Frank VanderSloot made campaign contributions from an array of related divisions of his company, Melaleuca, to Attorney General Lawrence Wasden’s re-election campaign in 2002; that year, Melaleuca spent more than $50,000 on campaign contributions to Wasden and attack ads against his opponent. VanderSloot was outspoken about the tactic, telling the Lewiston Tribune in November of 2002, “If I could figure out a legal way to give Larry Wasden more money, I would do it.” Other firms around the state began following suit; by the next election for statewide officials in 2006, the practice was illegal.

Hurst said he can’t say much about the Beck-Heileson case right now. “I got a copy of the report, and we’ll look into it,” he said.