SHORELINE – Public Disclosure Commission officials said Tuesday that an error in campaign finance reporting made it appear that Shoreline City Council candidate Cindy Ryu had collected and spent twice the amount she really did.
Electronic filings with the PDC showed that as of Sept. 22 Ryu had collected $30,209 and had spent $29,514. In reality, as of Sept. 22, she has raised $16,409 in cash and spent $11,187, said Doug Ellis, spokesman for the PDC.
“It appears she’s filed duplicate C-4 reports, so you get more money showing on both the expenses and the income sides. She has been in contact with our auditors and we are working with her to clean it up,” Ellis said.
“It was a mistake and I have to get it straightened out,” Ryu said. “Some of the expenses, instead of being entered once, got entered as bills to be paid, and when they were paid, got entered again, so it showed up again.”
A $9,245 “adjustment” to Ryu’s accounts reported on August 25 was also incorrect, Ellis said.
PDC web auditors tell candidates not to file adjustments to accounts when they shift money around internally, because the web filing system is not an accounting system, it’s a reporting system, Ellis said.
“When they start making these adjustments, there is no place for it to show up, so it shows up as a giant expenditure, when it is normally just internally shifting money around. We are working to rectify this over-reporting,” Ellis said.
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