Voucher client's ad agency calls probe unneeded

Executives of the advertising agency working for an anonymous pro-voucher client currently being investigated by the Utah Attorney General's Office for violating state election law say the state is wasting time and tax dollars in an investigation that will yield nothing.

Crowell Advertising executives, whose client is being targeted by the Attorney General's Office, say they have done everything the Lieutenant Governor's Office directed them to do to clarify what was essentially a misunderstanding, and thought they had cleared up the issue. It's just that state officials didn't believe them, Crowell executives say.

"They told us exactly what to do and we complied — it seems like no matter what we did they were going to forward it onto the attorney general anyway so why waste our time and their resources and my tax money for their resources," said Tracy Crowell, owner and president of Crowell advertising, who spoke for his client to maintain anonymity.

But state officials say they are only following the law.

"It's not like we are making decisions one way or the other but we have a directive in election law to follow these procedures, and we've done that," said Joe Demma, spokesman for the Lieutenant Governor's Office.

Last week the Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office asked the Attorney General's Office to investigate an anonymous pro-voucher entity they suspected of skirting election laws.

Demma said that more than a month ago they received an inquiry from Crowell Advertising, which was doing work for a pro-voucher client on a Web site and for radio ads, on whether or not they needed to file with the state as a Political Issues Committee.

Crowell said they were told that if his client was an individual and not a group then he would not be required to file.

But the fact that the individual's Web site solicited money to support vouchers raised some eyebrows in the Lieutenant Governor's Office.

"The fact of the matter is no matter what anyone said to us about what this gentleman was doing, he was soliciting money and once you do that you are potentially now a group of people and that's the bottom line," Demma said. "Whatever the stories are, I am sure the AG investigators will be interested in listening to them."

Crowell said that for a week in August the Web site contained a line soliciting money for the pro-voucher campaigns. He said that was due to an internal mistake and his client never took money, only forwarded information about other voucher groups that were taking donations.

He said the Lieutenant Governor's Office asked them to state in writing that the client was an individual and take the solicitation text off the Web site. Crowell said the agency did both and even enlisted the help of an attorney.

"At this point we really almost welcome the attorney general because maybe he'll actually come over and say, 'Is this an individual or a group?' and we'll say 'individual' and it will be settled," said Jack Ryser, senior account supervisor at Crowell.

Under state law it's a class B misdemeanor for PICs to miss the filing deadline.

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E-mail: terickson@desnews.com