Sloppy filings lead down road to nowhere

The Bronx Democratic Party is getting a lot of money from somewhere.

In its most recent filing, the Bronx Democratic County Committee reported thousands of dollars going to and from  people and organizations located “Somewhere,” “Some place” or even in “Some city.”  

With the Board of Elections breathing down its neck for not filing on time this year, the Bronx Democratic Party hastily threw together its filing with incomplete information. The party was apparently too busy to track down city and street names for many of its contributors and the omissions did not seem to get the attention of the Board of Elections, which claims it does not have the resources to keep tabs on local committees.

Expenses were reported in an equally sloppy manner, with even the Internal Revenue Service listed in “Some City, Some Place, NY.”

“Some st,” “Some street,” “Some where,” “Somewhere,” “Some place” or “Some city” was listed on 23 different contributions and on more than 100 expenses. Most of the incomplete expenses have the correct zip code, but still no city or street.

Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, treasurer of the Bronx Democratic County Committee, said last week he was working on updating the missing information, but only after he saw a Capital Tonight blog post, which pointed out that a contribution from the company owned by men who allegedly bribed Bronx state Sen. Eric Stevenson was filed as coming from “Some where, NY.” 

New Age Adult Day Care Inc. gave $4,000 to the Bronx Democratic Party in July 2012. The address of the company was reported by the Bronx Democratic Party as “Some St,” “Some where” in New York with a 10036 zip code.

New York state law requires political action committees to list addresses for all people or organizations that they give money to and receive money from. 

Mr. Benedetto said the Bronx Democrats received checks that were missing addresses, so they were fudged to avoid leaving the fields blank.