The leader of the Nassau County Legislature, Norma Gonsalves, violated state campaign finance disclosure rules eight times between 2013 and 2015, a state judge ruled last Friday.
Judge Christina Ryba of Albany County Supreme Court ordered Friends of Norma Gonsalves, the East Meadow Republican’s campaign committee, to pay $14,000 in fines for failing to file financial disclosure reports with the state Board of Elections, according to a Newsday report.
The Board of Elections brought legal action against Gonsalves in March after finding in December that she failed to file reports listing her campaign’s donors and expenses at least 34 times between January 2006 and February 2015. The board was seeking $28,000 in fines.
Ryba’s decision found there was “ample support” for the board’s claim in its lawsuit that Gonsalves’ committee failed to file 10 reports between 2013 and 2015, Newsday reported. The court decision was not immediately accessible online.
Gonsalves, who was last re-elected to the county Legislature in 2015, has blamed the missing filings on confusion with the Board of Elections’ electronic filing system and campaign treasurer Joseph Parisi’s failure to file them, Newsday has reported. Her committee has since filed several of the missing reports, according to multiple media reports.
John Ciampoli, an attorney for Friends of Norma Gonsalves, said the committee may appeal Ryba’s ruling because the Board of Elections never gave any notice of the violations. He also said the statute of limitations on filing violations should be four months, not three years, as the elections board claims.
“It’s clear that there were late filings that we brought the committee into compliance as soon as we found out about it, and the court, I think, recognized that by knocking down the penalty for the late filings,” Ciampoli said.
The decision only applied to Gonsalves’ committee and did not find fault with Gonsalves or Parisi individually, Ciampoli said.
Frank Moroney, Gonsalves’ spokesman, said that the committee will decide how to proceed as soon as Ryba’s decision is analyzed by the committee’s attorneys.
