Q&A
Overview of CFB audit process steps
0:53:57
·
3 min
Paul Seamus Ryan provides a detailed explanation of the general steps in the CFB audit process after a campaign submits their response to a draft audit report.
- The audit team analyzes the campaign's response to determine the sufficiency of their answers to issues raised in the draft audit
- If no outstanding legal issues remain, a final audit report is issued to the campaign
- If legal issues persist, the case is referred to the legal department for potential enforcement action
- Ryan also discusses a new policy limiting extensions in the audit and enforcement process to speed up future audits
- The new policy sets a maximum of 6 weeks total for extensions across all phases of the audit and enforcement process
Paul Seamus Ryan
0:53:57
The draft audit report document?
0:54:00
Excuse me.
0:54:00
It will be analyzed by our audit team to determine sufficiency of the responses to the issues that were raised in the draft audit itself.
0:54:09
And then depending on what the audit team this is not specific to any campaign, but as you had requested, general process.
0:54:18
The audit team determines whether or not there are any outstanding legal issues regarding compliance with our campaign finance laws unresolved by the campaign's response to the draft audit.
0:54:27
If there are no issues, they proceed to a final audit report, and that gets issued to the campaign.
0:54:32
If there are legal issues, it gets referred to our legal department, which then begins, the enforcement process, which, in short, amounts to drafting an enforcement notice that gets sent to the campaign to notify them of the, board's conclusions with respect to potential violations of law and, informs the campaign of their right to, either appear before the board or to go the oath process to address those concerns, those legal concerns by the Campaign Finance Board.
0:55:03
And you had mentioned, length of audits.
0:55:06
I alluded moments ago to another policy change, if I may Please.
0:55:10
Tell you about it now because it's directly related to extensions and audits.
0:55:14
You just alluded to one specific example of a campaign requesting an extension to, response to a draft audit report.
0:55:24
In my short term at the agency, I've been there nine and a half months now, it became quickly apparent to me, it's apparent to everyone, that, the length, the amount of time it's taken us to complete 2, 2021 audits is not satisfactory at all.
0:55:41
We need to figure out there are good reasons that it happened the way that it happened.
0:55:44
Our audit team has been working hard.
0:55:46
I've shared all these reasons the last time I appeared before you.
0:55:49
Now looking forward, one of the biggest reasons audits have taken as long as they have is because campaigns requested extensions, and we granted them, and we granted them, and we extensions, and we granted them, and we granted them, and we granted them at every step of the process.
0:56:00
This began in COVID, and out of the you know, perhaps we were too nice candidates.
0:56:03
I recognize this as a problem, and we quickly our staff, within my first couple months of the agency, identified a solution.
0:56:15
In October of this year, we've adopted a strict new policy limiting extensions in every phase of the auditing and enforcement process.
0:56:22
This is the initial document request, the draft audit, response, the enforcement notice response.
0:56:30
No more than 6 weeks extensions total allowed to any campaigns shorter in some circumstances.
0:56:37
So this is one of the linchpins in us speeding up audits in future elections.
0:56:41
This new policy is gonna take effect for the 2021 elections, and, you know, we're gonna hear it.
0:56:48
My colleague, Dan Cho, who runs our candidate services team is here.
0:56:51
He's gonna hear it.
0:56:52
Campaigns aren't gonna like it, probably, but it's a new day, and we have strict new limits on any and all extensions in the audit enforcement process.
