By JOE LOGAN (10/3/2007 5:31:27 PM)
EastAurora.org has recently learned the details regarding the guilty plea of Supervisor Terry Yarnall’s campaign committee to a violation of the New York State Election Law. The committee, “Friends of Terry Yarnall” pled guilty to the crime of intentionally failing to report expenditures and was fined $500.00. Yarnall signed the affidavit on November 13, 2006.
Erie County District Attorney Frank Clark’s office had been investigating Yarnall for close to a year.
A review of the plea arrangement reveals that Supervisor Yarnall is the current treasurer of the “Friends of Terry Yarnall” and that he has been a member of the committee since its inception including the time when the crime took place.
He states that, ”I am fully aware of the facts and circumstances dealt with herein and as stated in the People’s Misdemeanor complaint”. He goes on to state, “I offer this affidavit in support of the plea agreement in the above matter”. He concludes his affidavit by stating, “ [o]n behalf of the committee I authorize the Committee attorney to enter a plea of guilty to a violation of Election Law 14-126 (2).”
NYS Election Law 14-126.2 refers to failure to file expenditures related to a campaign for public office. “Any person who knowingly and willfully fails to file a statement required to be filed by this article within ten days after the date provided for filing such statement or any person who knowingly and willfully violates any other provision of this article shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
The misdemeanor complaint entered by Assistant District Attorney David S. Kelly states that the Committee known as the Friends of Terry Yarnall “…did commit a crime of knowingly and willfully violating a provision of article 14 of the New York State election Law”. This violation concerned a series of mailings sent out by a group called “Observers of Willink” during the 2004 Town of Aurora Supervisor election. The four political mailings attacked Yarnall’s opponent, incumbent Supervisor Tom Cotton.
The Misdemeanor complaint concludes that Yarnall’s campaign committee “intentionally failed to include those costs in a required State of New York Board of Elections Financial Disclosure Statement submitted by Friends of Terry Yarnall”.
Supervisor Yarnall had until entering this guilty plea publicly denied any connection to these mailings. Yarnall had told The Southtowns Citizen in an article published in September of 2005 that, “he has no idea what “Observers of Willink” is and that his campaign operates under a different name”. Based on the affidavit he signed, Yarnall apparently lied about his connection with the Observers of Willink and has been misleading his municipality about his lack of knowledge of it.
Yarnall won that election against Tom Cotton by 30 votes. The four mailings totaled thousands of pieces of negative mail, sent out in the final weeks of the election, none of which were legally filed by the committee.
The purpose of the law is to prevent large organizations like developers from giving soft campaign contributions to candidate’s anonymously with the hope of getting favorable rulings from the municipalities. There is no word on what entity gave Yarnall's campaign the money for the mailings.
Harry Wahl, Yarnall’s campaign manager during the time the crime occurred, was named by the mailhouse as a person who they worked with in copying the documents for mailing. They said the the payments were made in cash. Wahl’s wife Kelly was hired by Yarnall after the election and is a current candidate for the Aurora Town Board.
EastAurora.Org is the first to report on this guilty plea.
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