New Expense Reporting Rules for Texas Candidates and Officeholders

The Texas Ethics Commission has new rules about how candidates and officeholders report expenses. They apply to expenses made on or after July 1, 2010. My advice is to be mindful now of these new reporting categories for expenditures, before they are required. Note that you do not have to report expenditures this way on the report that is filed on July 15th. All of those expenditures will be made prior to July 1. But, if you go ahead and start applying these categories now, you'll practice staying out of trouble with the TEC. I'll go so far as to suggest you may want to design an expense reimbursement form that requires selecting one of these categories for each expense.

Also, remember, that you always report where the expense actually occurred (and the address) - Office Depot, Cafe Express, the name of the print shop, etc. You don't report "Visa" or the name of the staff person who requested the reimbursement. Complete TEC rules can be found at this link.

After July 1st, here is how you are going to have to categorize and describe campaign and officeholder expenses, or else take the risk of having a complaint filed against you:


Subchapter B. GENERAL REPORTING RULES
§ 20.61. Purpose of Expenditure

(a) For reporting required under Section 254.031 of the Election Code, the purpose of an expenditure means:

(1) A description of the category of goods, services, or other thing of value for which an expenditure is made.  Examples of acceptable categories include:

(A) advertising expense;
(B) accounting/banking;
(C) consulting expense;
(D) contributions/donations made by candidate/officeholder/political committee;
(E) event expense;
(F) fees;
(G) food/beverage expense;
(H) gifts/awards/memorials expense;
(I) legal services;
(J) loan repayment/reimbursement;
(K) office overhead/rental expense;
(L) polling expense;
(M) printing expense;
(N) salaries/wages/contract labor;
(O) solicitation/fundraising expense;
(P) transportation equipment and related expense;
(Q) travel in district;
(R) travel out of district;
(S) other political expenditures; and

(2) A brief statement or description of the candidate, officeholder, or political committee activity that is conducted by making the expenditure.  The brief statement or description must include the item or service purchased and must be sufficiently specific, when considered within the context of the description of the category, to make the reason for the expenditure clear.  Merely disclosing the category of goods, services, or other thing of value for which the expenditure is made does not adequately describe the purpose of an expenditure.

(b) The description of a political expenditure for travel outside of the state of Texas must provide the following:

(1) The name of the person or persons traveling on whose behalf the expenditure was made;
(2) The means of transportation;
(3) The name of the departure city or the name of each departure location;
(4) The name of the destination city or the name of each destination location;
(5) The dates on which the travel occurred; and
(6) The campaign or officeholder purpose of the travel, including the name of a conference, seminar, or other event.

(c) This rule applies to expenditures made on or after July 1, 2010.