The state ethics commission approved a consent agreement Friday with a former Georgia Senate majority leader initially accused of illegally using campaign money to repay himself more than he actually loaned his campaign.
The commission and former Sen. Chip Rogers agreed to a $20,000 fine for failing to file campaign reports on time and not accurately reporting loans the lawmaker made to his campaign from 2004 to 2012.
The final agreement between Rogers and the commission does not include allegations that he used campaign money to overpay loans made to his campaign.
In 2021, commission staff said Rogers used leftover campaign money once he was out of the General Assembly for thousands of dollars in personal expenses, spending money at Six Flags, Dillard’s Department Store, the PGA Super Store, a luxury car dealership in Florida and the Shaky Boots Music Festival.
Under state law, politicians can only use campaign money to win and maintain their office. Once they leave office, they can dispose of that money by donating it to charity, returning it to donors or repaying campaign debt and expenses
The commission said Rogers, a Republican from Woodstock, didn’t file several mandatory campaign reports or adequately disclose how he spent some of the money he raised.
Rogers’ lawyer, Doug Chalmers, said at the time that the former senator’s repayments to himself did not exceed the value of his loans, that the statute of limitations on at least some of the allegations had run out and that records were no longer available to prove or disprove the case.
By the time Rogers left the Senate in 2012, he was one of the most powerful members of the General Assembly. He departed to take a $150,000-a-year state job — as an executive producer — at Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Like all legislative leaders, most of his campaign money came from lobbyists, special-interest business associations and individuals interested in legislation or state funding.
When he left office he still had about $234,000 in his campaign account, according to his disclosures. The most recent disclosures, filed in 2021, show about $60,000 left in his accounts.
Complaints were first made against Rogers in 2015 after he filed a series of campaign disclosure report amendments that, among other things, showed his campaign owed him thousands of dollars more than he’d earlier stated.
By increasing the listed debt, he could pay himself back more of the leftover money, commission officials said.
Candidates frequently loan themselves money to run for office. It is legal for them to use donations they receive to repay those loans. It is not legal for candidates to pay back more than they loaned their campaign, which Chalmers said Rogers didn’t do.
Chalmers said at the time that Rogers looked through his records and found that there were expenses he incurred — such as a substantial amount of mileage and phone costs when he was in office — for which he’d never been reimbursed.
From 2012 on he reported paying himself back more than $50,000 in loan repayments and for mileage, according to disclosures.
Commission staff said there were no loan agreements to show why the campaign suddenly owed Rogers more than he’d originally reported. But Chalmers said that was one of the problems with the case. Records for some of the original campaign reports and bank records weren’t available anymore because Rogers first ran for the Senate in 2004.
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