Ethics Commission dismisses complaint

FAYETTEVILLE -- The Arkansas Ethics Commission found no evidence the group Repeal 119 was involved with an anonymous robo-call criticizing Fayetteville's Civil Rights Administration ordinance or used its resources to endorse City Council candidates.

The commission, which enforces state election laws, unanimously dismissed a complaint filed in November by Sonia Davis Gutierrez.

"Evidence gathered during the course of the investigation reflected that Repeal 119 appears to have complied with the (ballot question committee) ... requirements," Graham Sloan, commission director, said in a Feb. 27 letter, the day the commission ruled on the matter.

Gutierrez, who supported the ordinance and ran an unsuccessful campaign for City Council last year, filed the complaint after receiving an automated phone call Nov. 23, two days before a Ward 1 runoff election between Alderwoman Adella Gray and challenger Paul Phaenuf.

A female voice in the two-minute recording didn't identify herself, but said the call was "paid for by Save Fayetteville." The woman referenced the Nov. 19 arrest of Terry Bean, a founder of the Human Rights Campaign, and claimed Fayetteville's ordinance would allow men who perceive themselves as women to enter girls' bathrooms. While it didn't expressly advocate for or against repeal of the ordinance, the message encouraged residents to call Gray "to tell her you are disappointed with her continued support for Fayetteville ordinance 119."

State law requires groups that spend or receive more than $500 "for the purpose of expressly advocating the qualification, disqualification, passage or defeat of any ballot question" to register as ballot question committees with the Ethics Commission.

No group called "Save Fayetteville" registered with the state. Repeal 119 and Keep Fayetteville Fair, a group advocating against repeal, were both registered ballot question committees.

Duncan Campbell, Repeal 119's president, has maintained his group had nothing to do with the robo-call Gutierrez complained about.

"I don't know where this came from," he reiterated Wednesday.

"Why did (Gutierrez) both assume and then accuse us and actually file an ethics complaint with no evidence?" Campbell said. "She thought, 'I'm going to assume it was them.' And that's a little disconcerting."

"I expected (the Ethics Commission) to dismiss it, because we knew we had not done these things," he added.

Gutierrez said Wednesday she accepted the Ethics Commission's ruling but still had questions.

"The good news is it rules (Repeal 119) out as the responsible party but, for me, I'm not really sure now where to take it at this point, because Save Fayetteville doesn't seem to exist," she added.

"If there's going to be a group that's out there contacting people ... they need to be on record who they are," she said. "That was kind of the whole thing with (the Civil Rights Administration ordinance). It was very easy to make remarks about and toward a specific group of people to create fear, and then to be kind of really cowardly about who was making those remarks."

In her complaint, Gutierrez also alluded to an Oct. 27 post on the Repeal 119 Facebook page, which promoted an audio interview with Phaneuf, John La Tour and Joshua Crawford, three City Council candidates who said their opposition to the ordinance prompted them to run for public office.

The Ethics Commission acknowledged the post but determined "there was no language endorsing the candidates or urging voters to vote for a particular candidate," Sloan said in his letter.

Campbell said Phaneuf, La Tour and Crawford were all part of the Repeal 119 movement.

But, he added, "We tried to make sure we weren't endorsing them. There were never any campaign funds."

"We were always trying to do our best to do things right," Campbell said.

Joel Walsh can be reached by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWAJoel.

NW News on 03/12/2015