LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - State campaign finance regulators are not budging in their 2-year-long effort to get a Las Vegas casino company to pay a $97,000 fee for filing a campaign report late.
The Accountability and Disclosure Commission on Friday approved a hearing officer's recommendation that it continue to levy the same fee it did in 2005 against Coast Casinos. The Las Vegas company spent $970,000 on a 2004 ballot initiative campaign to legalize gambling in Nebraska, a proposal voters turned down.
The commission determined in 2005 that the fee owed by Coast for filing a spending report more than four months late was equal to 10 percent of the $970,000 worth of political contributions it failed to report on time, or $97,000.
Coast interpreted the law governing how fines are calculated differently, and said the fine should have been calculated at $100 per day the statement was overdue, or $14,200.
State law says the penalty for not filing an out-of-state contribution report at 'one hundred dollars for each day the report remains not filed in violation of this section, not to exceed three thousand dollars or ten percent of the amount of the contributions or expenditures which were required to be reported, whichever is greater.'
Coast appealed the fee to Lancaster County District Court in 2005, and a judge sent the issue back to the commission to take action after gathering formal testimony, among other things. That led to the hearing early this year in which the recommended that the $97,000 fee was correct.
The issue was expected to return to a courtroom.
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