D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown has held onto his old constituent services fund — called council “slush funds” by some — after he became chairman and has even received donations as he has repeatedly said he doesn’t have such a fund.
Council members are allowed to raise $80,000 a year in private donations for their individual constituent services funds, which are treated as supplemental budgets. They can legally spend the dollars on nearly anything they want and expenses run the gamut from funeral services to sporting event tickets.
Staffers for the chairman say the fund he used when he was an at-large councilman just hasn’t been closed out yet and note that Brown never opened a new fund when he became chairman last year.
“He only has a fund in that there is a balance outstanding which he can donate to a charity, which he plans to do,” said Brown’s deputy chief of staff, Karen Sibert. “But those are not funds he is issuing nor has used as chairman and he is not soliciting funds as chairman. He just determined as chairman that he wasn’t going to have a constituent services fund.”
However, a handful of donations and expenses were made in September of last year — nine months after Brown became chairman. Sibert said that’s because in August Brown’s treasurer decided to inquire about closing out the fund and was informed that, in order to do so, the fund needed to have a zero balance. In 2010, the account had incurred $3,192 in expenses that could not be reimbursed with the funds available.
So in September last year, six donations totaling $3,500 were deposited in the account and $3,092 was paid out on the outstanding debt, including a $2,082 reimbursement to Brown, campaign finance records show.
According to the most recent filing for the fund called Councilman Kwame R. Brown CSF, the remaining cash on hand as of Jan. 1 of this year totals $914.63.
Sibert said that amount will be donated in order to close out the account to zero.
“The chairman does not have a constituent services fund,” she said.
