While I haven't yet had a chance to peruse the data within, I want to follow up on my post from last Friday and extend my congratulations and thanks to Rep. Dawnna Dukes. As had been reported by Corrie MacLaggan at the Austin American-Statesman, Dukes had chosen not to file corrected campaign finance reports with the Texas Ethics Commission due to potential fines that would be automatically incurred regardless of her intent to bring closure to a 2007 ethics complaint against her.
As I wrote in that post...
But this is a real catch-22 situation, where the law is not encouraging the right behavior.
...
The issue would be effectively dead if those correct reports were released to the media for review or posted to a campaign website in lieu of going back to the Texas Ethics Commission.
Rep. Dukes did just that, posting the 4 corrected TEC reports on her campaign website under a section titled "Catch-22" which explained the situation. They are now available to the public to download and view here.
While the extended time from the original complain to this resolution could have been truncated, far be it from me to not commend Rep. Dukes for doing the right thing here. It's the right decision and I for one appreciate her for doing it.
