Buckeye Institute Coordinated on Political Activities

We just love the Buckeye Institute - Ohio's premier organization for former Blackwell campaign staffers - 'round here. Anyways, yesterday I started to chronicle a few ways in which I thought BI might be running afoul of bubba' law. Well, last night I may've found damning documentation on how Ohio's premier conservative public policy organization is violating it's 501(c)(3) tax exempt status by coordinating with a political campaign.

First, a quick lesson on 501(c)(3)'s. These organizations are tax exempt because the majority of them are public charities - churches, community organizations, etc. Many organizations with a political lobbying fronts will incorporate at 501(c)(3)'s under certain political restrictions. Among them, these organizations can conduct issue advocacy and many other political activities, but they are expressly prohibited from expressly advocating for a political candidate, or coordinating with political electoral campaigns.

Yesterday I chronicled how they're throwing a big bash this morning to express their discontent with the state of Ohio schools (unlike regular advocates, they're advocating for schemes that encourage privatization of schools). Normally, activities like these issue campaigns would be perfectly acceptable under regular tax law as simple issue advocacy. However, it appears that these activities may be coordinated with the Bill Todd campaign's message calendar.

On Monday Todd filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of funding in Ohio's school when per pupil costs are not exactly identical amongst student intra-district. Coincidentally, this law suit touches precisely on the subject matter of the BI's lecture this morning. Now, absent communications between the Todd campaign and the Buckeye Institute, this sort of coincidence would be just that - a lucky scheduling boom for both organization. However, it appears that the two organizations have been conferring with one another on their schedules and activities...precisely the type of coordination federal law prohibits.

The proof? Well here's one element.

Todd's lawsuit was filed on Monday with the Clerk of Courts at 11:50am. On Monday and thereafter, the Franklin County clerk stated the documentation of the lawsuit would not be available for release to the public until the end of the week. The Todd campaign didn't publicly release word of the suit until 2pm on Monday during a press conference either. However, strangely enough, the lawsuit was available for download on the BI's webpage on Monday. In fact, that .pdf's properties from the Buckeye Institute's webpage says that it was created at 12:06 pm on Monday - exactly 16 minutes after it was filed with the clerk of courts.

This means one of two things.

1. Someone in the Clerk of Courts office is engaging in partisan political activities and giving lawsuit documentation out to select parties when they're not available to the public yet.

OR

2. The Todd campaign made a scan of their filed lawsuit and sent it to the Buckeye Institute, and BI promptly posted it on their website with additional media promoting the case, Bill Todd, and the issue.

Forgive me for rushing to assumptions, but I'm going to guess that this situation is the latter rather than the former. If that's the case, I have to inquire how extensive the Todd campaign's coordination with BI is....have they had this lawsuit and "issue advocacy" planned in coordination all along; how about the media promoting both from the BI website and the Todd website? Be sure, I'll be contacting both the Todd campaign, the Clerk of Courts, and the Buckeye Institute for their sides of the story today.

Regardless, it appears someone is breaking the law.