Click here for the Campaign Funding Report For Dina Fisk
Click here for the Campaign Funding Report For Ron Williams

The Odd Fax

One of the oddest discoveries in looking through the Campaign Finance Reports was a copy of an email from the candidate, Dina Fisk, to her Treasurer, Dan Berry, that was faxed from Harrington Bank after Berry annotated it. I gives a nice peek into the close relationships among the development special interests as they try to elect Fisk and Williams to the City Council.

Fisk writes:

Questions Raised

This sure raises interesting questions:

1. Why is a Las Vegas corporation funding two different candidates for Overland Park City Council and giving each the maximum $500 contribution allowed by law? Does it have a project that will appear before the Council Members it is trying to elect?

2. Who is the attorney who is receiving checks from this Las Vegas corporation and passing them along to Fisk? The attorney is not her Treasurer, so what role does he play and what law firm is he associated with? Does he also play a role in the Williams' fund raising campaign - other than passing along a check sent to Dina? Is he being paid for this role or is he simply donating professional time and is that in-kind contribution going to appear on either candidate's financial reports?

3. Why did Fisk deposit the $500 check for Williams into her account in the first place? Was it not made out to Williams? Apparently not, so who was it made out to - to her? Did she not know that it was illegal for her to receive over $500 from one contributor? Did her attorney, whoever that was, not know that it was illegal? How does an attorney "inadvertently" give one candidate a $500 check meant for another candidate?

4. Did the two $500 checks that Fisk was able to deposit in her own account really come directly from Spanos, which meant Spanos sent over $500 directly to Fisk - which would be illegal? Or did Spanos transfer $1,000 to the unidentified attorney, who then was responsible for distributing the funds, got confused, and wrote Fisk two $500 checks?

5. If Fisk's $500 check from this Las Vegas corporation was dated Jan 31 and deposited on February 6, why did it take so long for Dina's unidentified attorney to figure out that another check for $500 from the same corporation should have gone to Williams' campaign? If it did not take a long time, why did Ron Williams not list the deposit in his campaign finance report?

This Is Certain: Special Interests Want Fisk and Williams On The Council. Do You?

Of course, the one certain point is that both Dina Fisk in Ward 5 and Ron Williams in Ward 6 are thought by the developers themselves to be sympathetic to the development special interests and Spanos in turn is willing to contribute the maximum amount it can ($500) to each of these two candidates.

Voters should wonder how sympathetic they can expect Fisk and Williams to be to their concerns. If Spanos brings a project to the City Council that hurts local residents, will those residents get as sympathetic a hearing as Spanos? Or will they be called NIMBY's and their concerns blown off? NeighborhoodNet doubts these candidates will be as sympathetic to residents as they are to the developer special interests. That is why NeighborhoodNet endorses Dan Carbery in Ward 6 and John Thompson in Ward 5 - who are not being funded by these special interest groups.

[return to top]