Photo by Matt Cohen.
Update: TIE D.C. had their fines dropped. In an email, TIE D.C. head William Jones says that, after appealing the case to the D.C. Board of Elections, “they found no substance to the complaint at a prehearing.” After the DCBOEE officer gave the Office of Campaign Finance two weeks to show more information “showing valid grounds for complaint,” TIE D.C. was asked to amend their organization’s statement and the case was dropped.
“This actions of the DC Cannabis Campaign and OCF follow the pattern seen in other states of bullying and intimidation of those who speak out against the marijuana agenda,” Jones writes in an email.
Original post:
When Initiative 71—the ballot initiative to legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana in the District—was overwhelmingly approved by D.C. voters, it seemed as if there weren’t too many opponents.
In fact, up until the end of the summer, no one had really voiced their opposition of legalizing marijuana in D.C. But in August, a group called TIE D.C., which stands for “Two Is Enough, D.C.” (meaning that alcohol and tobacco are enough legal substances in the District), formally launched their campaign to dissuade local voters from voting to legalize marijuana in the District. But, as it turns out, their campaign wasn’t entirely legal.
According to documents from the Office of Campaign Finance obtained by DCist, TIE. D.C. was in violation of several campaign finance laws, including failure to officially register as a political committee, failure to file a financial report, and failure to include proper language on its campaign literature.
In response to the allegations against TIE D.C., head William Jones testified in a recent hearing with the OCF that “TIE D.C. was nothing more than a blog that he started to inform the public about the proposed initiative by voting against it.” Jones also stated that he was the chairperson for the “No On 71” initiative, which he argued was the political committee he started to officially campaign against marijuana legalization.
But on September 17, 2014, TIE D.C. officially launched what was perceived to be a bona fide campaign. They even held a press conference outside of the Bible Way Church to announce their campaign. “T.I.E. D.C. is committed to protecting these communities and the rest of the city from the consequences of legalizing a third recreational drug,” Jones said at the presser in September.
According to the OCF’s allegations, TIE D.C. “may have begun as a blog, but it eventually became a full scale political movement, which was required to register with the OCF,” but it never did. Moreover, the OCF says that TIE D.C. never filed a receipt and expenditure report, which any organization or committee raising funds for campaigning are supposed to do.
In the OCF’s report, Jones says that TIE D.C. never collected any “therefore they were not obligated to file a financial report.” But the OCF says the TIE D.C. website explicitly solicited donations through a PayPay “donate” button (that’s since been removed from the website), and thus “raises the presumptions that it is more likely than not that [it] collected contributions.
In an email, Adam Eidinger, head of the Cannabis Campaign, the group responsible for Initiative 71, tells DCist that ” I appreciate the OCF agreeing with our concerns that TIE DC was not playing by the rules,” adding that, despite their campaign “it had little impact convincing voters to oppose ending arrests for growing and giving marijuana for adults.”
The OCF recommended that Jones receive a fine of $2,000 for violating campaign finance laws with his TIE D.C. campaign. DCist reached out to Jones for a request to comment but has not yet heard back. We’ll update when we do. You can view the full report from the OCF below:
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