House Committee on Ethics [May 07, 2026]

House Committee on Ethics will come to order. Ms. Berger, please call the roll.

Excused. Madam Chair? Here. All right. Thank you all for being here. We are here to review some more of the evidence that has come in over the last week, as well as I think it's important that we dig in a little bit to Representative Lindsay's response. I do want to report that Representative Soper is here now and also see if there are any questions on the information that OLLS has provided us on some of the definitions that I in particular asked for a couple meetings ago, just to see if there's any additional clarity needed there. So I'll turn it over to our OLS team for any updates or input that you have. Ms. Love?

And I don't know if we want to go over the timeline now or if you want to wait on that. I think we'll – thank you, Ms. Love. I think we'll wait and we can dig into that, but I do really, really appreciate that you have, in a very short time period, put that together. I can imagine that was a tremendous amount of work. And I did have time, and hopefully others on the committee as well, to at least briefly look through that timeline. I realize it's 48 pages long, but it was very, very helpful, and kudos to you for putting it all together. I did want to ask and mention to see, as I was looking at that timeline just briefly, it occurred to me that it might be helpful if we had the ability to also make notes on that timeline or put in information that we find pertinent. And so if it is potentially shareable with the committee to be able to add things to that timeline.

Thank you for that. So yeah I would encourage everyone if you have pieces of information that you find that strike you as important for us to all be on literally the same pages to please add that in there. And perhaps what we could also do, maybe the document tracks who put what in, but perhaps we could even initial in parentheses what we have put in there as individuals, so that way I know if I see something with JM on it, I know who to ask about that. Okay, great. Before we dig into anything else, I wanted to ask committee members if you have any input or further questions on the definitions that I had asked OLLS to help us with as far as legal definitions. And I also want to thank you for that because I learned a lot more about what fiduciary means and fiduciary relationship. It's way more deep and broad than I had imagined in just the everyday use of the term. And it was helpful for me to read things such as if there was a breach in a fiduciary relationship, the duty of care and how one's actions can potentially constitute gross negligence or just bad processes. and that can also fit into the definition of fiduciary if you're in charge of someone else's best interest. So you had also given us information on gross negligence and how it could potentially be different from ordinary negligence. So acts or remissions falling short of intentional misconduct but nevertheless showing a failure to exercise care. That was very helpful. And then, of course, you had misappropriation and money laundering in there as well. So I just wanted to make sure there was no additional comments from the committee from any of those definitions. And thank you all again for doing that. All right. I'm not seeing any questions. Next, I thought I would just go back to our charge here as a committee, you know, what our duty is here. and again bring us all back to we're looking to see if there's enough evidence to support a reasonable belief or probable cause that an ethics violation has occurred here. And the complaint is that Representative Lindsay grossly mismanaged and frequently used the petty cash fund for personal use in an unethical and potentially criminal manner, and I'm quoting Representative Marshall's words here, with funds unaccounted for by appropriate receipts or with any other basic and fundamental fiscal measure one would expect of a person. and the exercise of fiduciary duties required by such a role in office. And further into his complaint, the categories were, number one, misappropriation of campaign funds or money laundering, and that has to do with the $2,500 from the campaign account with reimbursement to a personal account. Number two, misappropriation, misallocation of caucus funds. This had to do with the that was originally tied to caucus retreat charges thought to be on a personal card when not found to be the case were retained to reimburse money spent over time from a personal account And number three personal use of the fund debit card relating to the one use of the card according to his complaint, for a motel payment in Oregon in March 2025. So just wanted to steer us back to that's exactly what we're here to look at. I wanted to open up the committee discussion on specifically we haven't dug into or discussed in detail at all. Representative Lindsay's response, even though we had it, we didn't take the opportunity to look at her response. And I wanted to be able to do that today with committee's input. So I will hopefully you all have that in front of you right now so that we can just go through it and have thoughts and reactions to it. And looking at her letter, she first goes into her appreciation and understanding of what the caucus chair duties are and how each member is supposed to contribute $2,500 for a two-year term, but says that that has never been the case. as long as she's been caucus co-chairs and kind of the obstacles that they have run into on trying to get that. She talked about in her fourth paragraph how there have been a handful of incidents where a personal card was used, when the caucus card wasn't on hand. I would say seeing the evidence, there's much more than a handful. And that's my first takeaway as far as this goes in looking at the evidence and also looking at her response. That need or that desire or that making it simple for her to use personal cards instead of the campaign cards is certainly something that shouldn't be done, in my opinion. but whether or not it was some kind of intentional misuse of the fund is what I want to hear from you all. I actually went through the chart of receipts and found one, two, three, four, five, six different card endings that have been used instead of the fund debit card, which is a lot of different debit and charge cards. So thoughts on at least that use of personal credit or debit cards.

I had that same thought, and so I dug into those banks bank statements and noticed that throughout 2023, every single bank statement from the petty cash fund account only had one debit card that there was a $2 charge every month for one card. It was $2 per card. All of 2023 only had one card. And it is apparent that perhaps that one card was in Reptitone's possession because it was the card that was stolen. It wasn't until, so in 2024, there were three cards issued on the account. So it was a $6 charge every month. And then in 20, and that was the case until March 2025 when it was back down to two cards. And so what I can't discern from all the information is who actually had the card or had the three cards all throughout 2024. So these charges that show up as kind of reimbursement charges for Representative Lindsay 2022, 2023, those I can kind of get. And then there was the text messaging that was between Representative Lindsay and Representative Titone that Representative Lindsay said she got a new card, but it wasn't activated and she was unable to activate it because she was not a signer on the account. And that was January of 2024. So I'm not exactly clear when she ever became a signer on the account, but it seems obvious to me that she wasn't the entirety of 2023 and 2022. and also Representative Titone appeared to still be on the account as a signer through 2025 because Representative Lindsay could not even access the bank statements to reconcile. And that was a text message in August 2025. So if she couldn't access the online account to even look at the bank statements, how would she ever even know what the balance was and who was reconciling the account? Representative Titone had a spreadsheet from the end of 2022 to February 2023, but that's also not a lot of time and kind of incomplete. So I still have unanswered questions, but also know that there is some evidence that perhaps she couldn't see the balance. She couldn't know and was driving blind and buying stuff on her car. Representative Mabry.

So Representative Garcia Sander?

Yeah, that's hard to know. And it's hard to know because we can't see evidence of any communication that was happening between whoever had access to the balance and the online account. So that might be one of those questions we're not able to fully answer. All right. The Representative Lindsay explanation about paying the dues I want to have any input from committee on her explanation for how she paid her dues in 2025. Is that the right year? And how she wrote a check from her personal account to be deposited to the bank and then discovered that her check, along with three other members' checks, did not get deposited when she thought it had been. I want to hear what folks have to say about that. She first paid from a personal account her dues and then thought more about it and thought she should just pay that with her campaign funds. So she wrote herself a check, so she had access to the checkbook, to reimburse herself to her personal account and then found out that that actually, her personal check never actually cleared, never was deposited. And so that's when she says she reimbursed the fund and is saying that it was an oversight on her part, again, combined with lack of access to the online banking platform to reconcile. So still, even at that point, she's saying she could not get online, which is a problem, as we've said. Representative Mabry.

And then, because we're not ever going to see the check from her personal account for $2,500 because it never got to the bank or cleared. So we're not going to know that date. But I think that's important, too, to kind of outline that. If it's not already on the timeline, we can make sure it gets on there. Madam Chair. Yes, Representative Soper.

I hear you discovered later that her personal check wasn't deposited along with three other members' checks in the second deposit. So if she had collected a bunch of checks from everyone, like at our November retreat, and she had four checks stashed in some other envelope that she thought she had collected them all, and again, we're having to fill in the blanks a lot here, and discovered later that, oh, here's four more checks, including mine that weren't in that second deposit. Again, it's not great accounting when you're not keeping track of all these things. Which brings me to one of my questions I had in looking at all this, is that I, through all those bank records and statements, we don't have any photos of all the checks from every deposit. We don't have photos of the checks written off the account, which you can get from bank statements typically. And I've seen in some of the spreadsheets check numbers with, you know, where they're supposedly who the payee is. But I sure would like to see those pictures of those checks.

But that would help at least verify that this charge was truly to that caterer or that person or whatever. So if there is any way whoever has access to the online bank account during that period, if we can get the photos of Ms. Lowe, is that possible? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ideally, to be complete, and I only had this thought with checks written over the last week. I wanted to actually see the checks written. We have a couple that were to Representative Lindsay. But if we're trying to verify some of these charges out of the petty cash fund that were checks, the debits, we can see who they're to. Either Mr. Quinn has them or the bank has them. Somebody has access to that. But I don't know if they haven't already downloaded that. Is that something we can ask, that they have to go get it now? Because it's almost like we're asking a new question.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, the record is the check, and so I don't think they're creating a copy of the check. So to me, you're asking for documentary evidence, the check, the electronic copy of the check. So I don't think anyone's – it's not that they're creating evidence. They're accessing it.

I would like to see electronic photos of checks written out and checks deposited in to that account.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I should have introduced myself. I'm DiCecco at the Office of Legislative Legal Services. I'm stepping in for Deputy Director Chase, who was called over to Senate Appropriations. I as Miss Love indicated we've had we've already asked other parties for the information so Mr. Quinn I would not necessarily ask him because he has turned over everything so it's someone who has access to the account now is who we should be asking so it seems it's either representative Joseph or the speaker or the or representative Lindsay would be the ones well I do think that he has access to the account because it appeared through a lot of the email exchanges that Representative Joseph purposely gave him access to the account in order to do the audit and reconcile. So I don't know if that's not true anymore, Mr. Tchekov.

Fair, fair.

This is just a question relevant to this bullet point. And, you know, I'm admitting here I haven't memorized every single record. And just curious if any member of the committee has seen this. I have seen the check that was written to Mandy Lindsay for the dues return. I don't remember seeing an image of a check returning the return, right? Because the answer says when I became aware that that check never cleared, I immediately remedied the situation or maybe she didn't cash. the check, but what evidence do we have of the second part of that statement that the money was paid back by Mandy? Oh, okay.

I'd say for the first part of her statement, I totally agree with what she's saying. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that it would be frowned upon to spend your own money and get receipts. I think that's normal and, of course, a business everywhere. So I agree with that. I still have the same concerns we talked about at length the other day about the timing of the hotel. But on the last part of this, actually, you know what? If somebody else has something to chime in with, I've lost my train of thought here.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I remember my second thought here. So a big part of the framing here from Rep. Marshall has been that the sticky notes are not receipts, not actual records. Admittedly, I still have a lot of work to do digging through. we have these binders. But it does seem like Rep. Lindsey's account here of, yeah, I had the sticky notes to present to everybody, but I also have receipts to back it up. We at least have a lot of receipts to back up expenses. I haven't gone through line by line. the lines that I have gone through do match. And so it does seem like there is at least a record keeping that would suggest that the account that it's just sticky notes is not accurate.

representative um garcia sander thank you um madam chair i you know this part i'm really hung up on um because i'm putting together like there was lack of access to the account and apparently no ledger that she was keeping as far as here's what i think we have and here's the deposits and debits, bills to be paid and income. And when she says she also needed to be reimbursed for several thousands of dollars that I had spent using my own funds, I've been in that situation where I have had to provide for staff meetings or whatever, and I'll maybe have two or three receipts, but usually in a month you settle up and several thousands of dollars being spent from own funds, but yet there's no ledger, ongoing ledger to show here's, you know, or stack of receipts that you would have automatically to say, I know that we may not have enough money in the caucus account right now, but when we settle up, I'll true up and here's my accounts. Here's my booklet. Here's my ledger. I still think there's just some real negligence in tracking the dollars coming in and going out and a lack of urgency in finding out how much is in the caucus account and how would I know whether we're in the positive or negative? How do I know that we can't reimburse me for $3,000? And also several thousand is different than $6,000 500 or whatever it was. Several thousand is a few thousand. And so how in tracking all of this, it just seems like there's not 6,358. There's not a really good sense of knowledge of here's where I know I am, here's where I know the caucus is, and here's why I know I can reimburse myself, or here's how I know how much I need to be reimbursed. I needed to be reimbursed for $3,727 for the booklet of receipts that I'm keeping track of over many months. It just doesn't all gel for me, I guess.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, colleagues. And again, I was taking my kid into school. Really appreciate the conversation. And I agree with basically 99% of what's been said. Just starting with the chair's last comment, I think the answer is we don't know about intent. And so I think we would all agree on some sort of just base level that there is exceptionally sloppy bookkeeping going on. It is a scrambled egg, to use a breakfast metaphor because I just ate. and that scrambling of accounts, of payments going back and forth, of items being purchased, and it's not exactly 100% clear all the time who ultimately receives the benefits of those purchases. Is it the caucus or something else? And just tossing out things like the wagons that are purchased. Yes, I see the caucus chairs bringing food in on wagons sometimes when they need to bring things up, or their staff does up the elevators. Who holds on to those, and where do they go when Rep. Lindsay is no longer caucus chair, assuming that happens someday? There's a karaoke machine. There's a laser for a karaoke machine. Where is that? How many times has it been used by the caucus? Is that now something that is just Rep. Lindsay's? Is it going to stay property of the caucus when she's done? Or is it at her house currently? We don't know. And I think the sloppy bookkeeping, the scrambling of the egg, makes it so we can't clearly tell one way or the other. So I would agree that there's not clear evidence of malintent because the bookkeeping was so substandard, we can't parse it out. And so there's this concept in the law that you really shouldn't benefit from your own wrongdoing, that there are inferences to be drawn when you fail to meet a standard of care. And I do think that we need to have a separate conversation about whether there a fiduciary obligation here I haven seen yet and maybe I missed it where the role of the caucus chair is clearly spelled out in any place And it states, with respect to any accounts, that the caucus chair and co-chair assume a fiduciary duty vis-a-vis those funds. and maybe that's a recommendation that has to come out of this committee is some sort of clear guidance to people who run and assume these positions so they understand their obligations from the jump. But even if you were to put aside sort of the formal fiduciary obligation, common sense would dictate that if you're going to be serving in the state legislature, run for caucus leadership in this capacity, know that you are going to be in charge of this account, that you are essentially managing money on behalf of other people. So there's just a few things that leap out to me. One, not having access to the account for years while charges are being made is sort of just, you know, I think the word, maybe it was Representative Garcia Sanders said, And there's just blindly sort of going about your business, assuming there's enough in the account to cover whatever you're taking out of it, without really looking at it. That's a sign of failing to meet any reasonable standard of care. I don't remember it being reported to the caucus that cards were lost and stolen. That type of failure to communicate to the beneficiaries of the account if there was a problem, you know, I think she mentions in there that people didn't always pay their dues. What efforts were being made to collect dues? And if people really weren't paying dues, and maybe I missed a year. I'm going back and I'm looking, I'm like, goodness, you know, do I owe the caucus money? Has, you know, there have been sort of generic emails from time to time from leadership, But did reps Lindsay or Joseph or Tatone ever go and sit down with leadership and say, we have a serious collections issue? And if not, why not? And so I do think that the record is pretty clear on the sort of base point of really sloppy management of the account. Just something that falls far short of what any reasonable person should be doing. And it raises all these other questions because we don't know if certain items have been appropriated now for personal use or what the status is of those items. We don't know. It's like the paradox of the observer. Had there not been this ethics committee, is the very fact that we have formed going to change the outcome of whether some of those items would remain in the caucus or not? we've got really weird things like in the spreadsheet notice that I assume that this spreadsheet is from Representative Lindsay, the one that sort of lists out all the reimbursements well this actually was put together by OLLS too, no not us not the timeline, just this

Well, there's a huge disconnect there. Is it money that she's due back, or is it money that she gets credit for for paying in? According to her own spreadsheet, they were loans indicating that she expected some type of getting that money back at some point down the road. And to the extent she's loaning the caucus money, what are the terms? Is this an interest-free loan being provided by a caucus member? And Rep. Mabry, you just brought up the payments of the $2,500 in caucus dues. I would note that in the reconciliation we have, she gets a check, I think, in March, right? And then it's in April. April. Well, it's like she's paid in March and then pays it back in April? Something to that effect?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess to that point, it seemed from the email interactions that once Rep. Tatone was taken off, Rep. Tatone was like, hands off. The fiduciary responsibility was like, I'm out. And it seemed like in the emails that I still don't understand, and maybe I missed it, if Rep. Joseph actually has any hands on the accounting at all. I think she's been brought into the account statements. I think she's given that access. But I don't know that she has a card or has been managing any of the debits and deposits at all. That wasn't apparent to me through the emails. Thank you.

Sure. So really appreciate that comment, that line of sort of inquiry. I think that, you know, starting with Rep Joseph, it would seem to me, just from what I'm teasing out of the communications, is that she stepped into the role and started smelling something fishy in the kitchen. And that was really the impetus for a lot of this coming to light. My view is she comes into the kitchen and she's like, are those rat droppings? And people are like, no, no, no, no, don't worry about it, it's not rat droppings. And she's like, no, I think we need an inspection. I think we need to figure this out. my read of things is that created a lot of tension amongst the kitchen staff. And so my view of Rep. Joseph, just from what I'm reading in the papers and whatnot, is that she's almost like, yes, she's a chef, but she's also playing the role of health inspector because she's like, I don't think this is up to code. In terms of rep to tone, I think this goes back to sort of not having clear defined roles and responsibilities for the position. You know, when both caucus co-chairs come in, there should be an understanding that they are jointly and severally responsible for the management of these funds. And having a, you know, turn a blind eye. Yes, I'm nominally in charge of the kitchen. But what goes on there, I don't know, is not satisfactory if you're going to be in this role. So I think something that we should probably keep sort of as a side project as we make our recommendations to leadership on this is, yes, what are we going to do about Rep. Marshall's complaint and the different allegations that he's made? but also what recommendations can we make to leadership to really nip this in the bud? Because I feel like a lot of this comes from a lack of defined roles and responsibilities and clear expectations It should be a thing where when you come into this role within the first 14 to 21 days access to the accounts changes You go to the bank together, new signature cards are made, it's clear the prior folks step off, assuming that there isn't continuity in term over term. The old folks step off. The new folks assume control of the books, and they understand that they have to have receipts for every purchase that's made and that they are not to use personal funds unless it's an absolute emergency. Things like that, recommendations we can make to sort of stave off this thing in the future because I think that we've got one chef who's like coming in late and saying, oh my God, this is a mess. Another chef who was there who, you know, was sort of like the less I know the better. And that frees up the other chef to sort of run the kitchen and say, okay, I'm going to run this, but please don't look too close. because sometimes I order from our licensed distributor and sometimes I just got to go grab what's ever in my own pantry at home. And I'm going to, just in the back of my head, keep sort of a running tally on where things should shake out and I hope it's close enough in the end. But please don't look. And so now we're in this situation where the food's shitty, everyone's upset with each other, And the restaurant's going to maybe close. Which reminds me of my very first meeting where I was wondering if there was any job description. You know, it brings us right back to that because I don't think there was any clear expectations set out. And that partly is on us as well.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I won't be too long. I appreciate the kitchen analogy. I think that we starting to develop a clear picture of what was going on here I guess a couple of points stand out to me One is very much the Rep. Lindsay steps into this role. The other two cooks are doing different things, but she's become the full de facto manager of the account. and it is troubling that she for a long time didn't have online access. I mean, that to me was really troubling. The other things that I have found really troubling about the timeline is kind of the lack of urgency when you have funds going in, funds going out. I mean, she's explained the retreat issue. She's explained the theft of the card issue and how those monies were returned. She's explained the Super 8 Motel issue. And you could say that, you know, man, this account has had a lot of bad things happen to it. But when you also have sort of this lack of taking the responsibility of monies, particularly monies that are not your own, as being important, it starts to illustrate falling below a standard of care. And whether it's just sloppiness, we would classify that probably as negligence, as a very sloppy side of bookkeeping. but there definitely seems to be a picture here and I don't know that Rep. Lindsay would be the only one involved because we obviously have Rep. Tatone, Rep. Joseph I assume there's probably even some role for House Democratic leadership at least just inquiring about the accounts from time to time and so in terms of a recommendation I think Representative Woodrow made an important point that obviously we have to make a recommendation based on the complaint by Representative Marshall. That what we tasked with But I think a secondary recommendation could be kind of general findings that we recommend really for both caucuses that as the caucuses or maybe even nonpartisan caucuses emerge, that there is a reminder that this is an account that you need to manage with the utmost good faith, with fiduciary responsibility, to think of it in terms of all the rules that are laid out, both in statute and in the common law. So I think there's almost kind of two tracks. One is a general recommendation back to the body, but then we still have to answer the question about Rep. Lindsay from the complaint in the Rep. Marshall case. Okay.

I have two bills up today. I'm not going to be able to do any extra research before tomorrow and would appreciate Monday. I was thinking Monday myself only because I don't know what else we would be saying tomorrow. And I think we've had good discussion today and a lot to absorb. So Monday morning, there's probably a good chance that the majority leader may have us not start at 10 but at 9. I would suspect that she might do that. So in that mindset, let's say 8, and then if it changes, we can change as well. Is that good with everyone? All right, good.