Yesterday, I filed a formal complaint with the Michigan Secretary of State detailing two separate instances in which my opponent violated the Michigan Campaign Finance Act.

These violations provide yet more evidence that, instead of representing the people of this district, my opponent continues to represent the big-money special interests that fund his campaign. We need a representative who puts local people first!

First, on April 6, 2004, David Palsrok’s campaign committee accepted thousands of dollars from the president and members of the board of Community Loans of America, a payday lending corporation. At the time of the contribution, Palsrok was playing a lead role in the legislature’s debate on regulating payday lenders.

Corporate contributions are illegal in Michigan. Furthermore, when board members, officers, and directors are acting for a corporation, those contributions are also illegal. It simply defies belief that five individuals, living in three states, would all give the maximum allowable individual contribution to a key legislator in the payday lending debate, all on the same day, and that those individuals would not be in reality acting for the corporation. As the FBI’s investigation of Geoffrey Fieger shows, this type of aggregation of contributions can create an inference of wrongdoing and illegal activity.

The timing of these contributions is also important. On November 12, 2003, the House passed legislation that would allow payday lenders to charge 14% monthly interest on the value of the check. Palsrok voted against a Democratic proposal that would have set the interest rate at 10%, similar to the rate in Florida and others states. Palsrok, publicly stated that a 14% cap on monthly interest provided sufficient consumer protections. Governor Granholm ultimately vetoed this legislation because it failed to provide “sufficient safeguards against unscrupulous lenders.”

In June 2005, a bi-partisan group of legislators, including Palsrok and a number of Democrats, introduced a compromise version of the legislation that provided greater consumer safeguards. The interest charged on the maximum loan amount of $600, for example, would be 12.7%, as opposed to the 14% rate allowed in the earlier version of the legislation. On November 29, 2005, Governor Granholm signed this legislation into law.

It was during this process – or, to put it another way, while the political compromises were being worked out – that Community Loans of America, through its board members and president, made its contribution to Palsrok. It is this timing that raises additional concerns about whether these contributions crossed the legal line between establishing relationships and buying results on a particular piece of legislation. This is exactly the type of corrupt behavior that destroys public confidence in our representatives and was the very behavior the Michigan Campaign Finance Act was designed to prevent.

In addition, Palsrok clearly violated the law by contributing $1,000 of campaign committee funds to the Senate campaign of his former boss, Michael Bouchard.

The Michigan Campaign Finance Act prohibits contributions from one candidate committee to another. When a State Representative is this cavalier about the most basic campaign