This Wednesday brought the news that the Maine Ethics Commission has chosen to postpone the decision on giving a penalty fee on the proposed casino in York County. The commission has decided to delay the penalizing of the campaign with a few days and until that time an investigation on the $4-million funding is in progress.
In the process of researching the funding for the voting campaign, the regulator aims to discover whether the amount of money amassed for the cause have their source known and publicly announced. At the moment there are allegations that the people responsible for the campaign have been hiding it for more than a year and the validity of this suspicion is going to be proven through more than 10 hours of testimony material as well as cross-examinations.
The testimonies of people involved and the cross-examination reports have been provided by the attorneys who represent Lisa Scott, who is a real estate agent, Cheryl Timberlake, who is a lobbyist from Augusta, as well as numerous investors in the campaign. According to the information, they have spent more than $9 million on passing Question 1. In the process of the hearing, it became obvious that Lisa Scott and Cheryl Timberlake are passing the blame on who failed to report the sources around.
They also did not report any donations to the project from both offshore and domestic companies. The discovery of the officials was that every single one of the firms involved in the campaign for the proposed casino venue in the York County area is in a way connected to the brother of Lisa Scott, Shawn Scott. This puts Mr. Scott in a situation which could be best defined as a conflict of interests and it means that he is going to become the most suitable candidate for a license.
The Connection of Shawn Scott to the Case
Once the voting is done he is going to become the most suitable participant meeting all requirements and thus receive the exclusive rights to the gambling license of the new casino venue. If the idea is approved by the community this is going to be the third casino facility in the area. The companies involved are also linked to other investors in the project as it was discovered in the process of investigation.
As for the connection of Cheryl Timberlake to the donations, she was the treasurer for the ballot committee which was responsible for the spending of $4 million to qualify for it. In her testimony to the commission, she stated that at the time she had no notion of the rest of the firms donating funds to the campaign. Lisa Scott appeared to be the only investor in the casino campaign.
Over the course of the current investigation Jonathan Wane, Director of the Commission, expressed his position that nobody is to be blamed of intentional deceiving, however, there will be penalties. According to the law, they could reach as high as $4 million – the largest issued so far by the Ethics Commission.
