District 5 Metro Council Member Donna Purvis will avoid paying the full $20,000 in fines she wracked up after violating numerous campaign finance laws three years ago.
On Thursday, the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance board gave final approval to a settlement agreement with Purvis that saw the two-term Democrat pay $10,000, half of what she owed. It appears Purvis already made the payment using money she received from donors in 2022. On Feb. 19, Purvis updated her campaign finance disclosures to reflect a $10,000 payment to KREF last November.
The sanctions were the result of Purvis’ repeated failures to disclose many of the donations she received during her 2022 reelection bid and an annual report from 2020 that was more than 700 days late. Campaign finance disclosures are the only way the public can know which people, businesses or other interest groups are funding candidates for elected office. By law, candidates face fines for each day they fail to disclose their donors.
In an investigative report last year, KREF staff said this wasn’t Purvis’ first time failing to comply with state law.
“The Purvis Campaign Fund has a long history of non-compliance with Kentucky campaign finance law,” staff wrote.
They said Purvis only filed some campaign finance reports after the investigation began and in an attempt to “clear up this matter.”
Purvis did not respond to LPM News’ email seeking comment Thursday afternoon.
Through her attorney, Purvis told KREF last year that she made “good faith mistakes.” She blamed these mistakes on difficulties with a new, at the time, electronic finance reporting system,.
For its part, KREF staff said they believed Purvis didn’t knowingly violate the law and attributed the errors to “sloppy bookkeeping.” They did note, however, that dozens of candidates had no problem understanding the e-filing system.
In addition to failing to file donation disclosures in 2020 and 2022, KREF staff also found that Purvis unlawfully deposited campaign funds into her personal bank account. She also paid a campaign staffer out of her personal account then failed to disclose it.
LPM News reported on the fines Purvis was facing last year. Documents outlining KREF’s investigation of Purvis became public as a result of a lawsuit by her former legislative assistant, Denise Bentley.
Both Bentley and Ray Barker, who ran against Purvis in the 2022 Democratic primary, accused her of unfairly hiding her donations and spending . Barker lost the primary to Purvis by just 35 votes.
