Raleigh | According to the N.C. State Board of Elections, Rep.
Thomas Wright failed to report more than $13,000 in contributions from nurse anesthetists in 2005. In an interview Tuesday, Wright said he might have made mistakes on his reports but did not purposely fail to report those contributions. It is a crime to purposely fail to disclose contributions, and it is perjury to knowingly file a false campaign finance report.
Last week, the elections board alleged that Wright failed to disclose $220,000 in contributions and $234,000 in expenses. The board charged that he knowingly filed false reports, and its members voted unanimously to refer Wright's case to the Wake County prosecutor. An earlier Star-News analysis of disclosure reports revealed that Wright has not reported receiving 273 donations totaling $119,607 that political committees have said they sent to him.
While the nurse group's effort to give contributions to Wright was mentioned at the elections board's May 15 meeting, and nurses were available in the room to testify, the contributions got little more than a mention during the five-hour hearing. After the May 15 hearing, investigator Kim Strach said, the board had Wright's banking records as well as information provided by the nurse contributors. "They have been very helpful," she said.
The contributions were given legally, she said. Strach refused a request to provide the list of nurse contributions, saying that information was part of the closed file of information the board would hand over to prosecutors. Through its attorney, the nurses' trade association also refused a request for the list.
The lawyer, Michael Crowell, said that was the best course of action because the information was part of a file of information that may become part of a criminal investigation. In the board's summary, investigators said Wright received $18,075 from nurse anesthetists at a fundraiser held at the Seaside Club in Wrightsville Beach on Nov. 12, 2005, and that Wright failed to disclose $13,375 collected at that event.
He reported receiving a $2,000 donation from the N.C. Association of Nurse Anesthetists political committee on Nov.
16, 2005. In his first 2006 campaign disclosure, Wright reported receiving $5,950 from individuals with occupations listed as CRNA, the industry acronym for a nurse anesthetist. The report doesn't indicate which contributions were given at the fundraiser and which might have been given before or after.
Making it harder to pinpoint when they were given is the fact that all of the contributions are listed as being received in February 2006. Other than those contributions, Wright reported one other contribution from a CNRA in 2006 - a $125 donation disclosed in his second quarter 2006 report. "I recall submitting everything coming from" the nurses, he said.
But if the list is not complete, he said, then "that is a mistake." Joe Sinsheimer, who filed the original complaint against Wright to the elections board, charged that contributions were reported late to avoid controversy. In summer 2005, Wright's health committee approved House Bill 503, a bill opposed by nurse anesthetists.
Wright failed to bring the bill to the floor of the House, a move which effectively killed the bill.
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