Council member Karen Stegman attacked CHALT in a newsletter this week. https://karenstegman.substack.com/  CHALT was formed in 2015 to provide a counterweight to the development lobby in order to give neighborhoods a more effective voice and improve Council decisions.

The Treasurer of the Chapel Hill Political Action Committee sent this reply to her inaccurate statements.

Karen —

As you know, I am the Treasurer of the Chapel Hill Leadership PAC.  We were organized in 2015, not to “circumvent town campaign giving limits” as you suggest, but to follow the intent of the NC Election Laws. Any organization or group of people which raises and spends money to support candidates for elective office or to take a public position on any referenda contained in an election is expected to form a Political Action Committee (PAC) and to be registered with the NC State Board of Elections (SBE). This PAC is required to appoint a treasurer, who must complete a training course administered by the SBE. The Treasurer is then required to prepare and submit periodic Campaign Finance Reports to the SBE and to county Boards of Elections. These reports contain the donation amounts and names and information about the donors to the PAC, as well as the amounts and information about all expenditures by the PAC. CHL-PAC will accept donations from anyone who desires to support our chosen candidates.

The CHL-PAC has, through the years, raised and disbursed funds to support GOTV efforts in support of candidates for Chapel Hill Mayor and Council, including your candidacy. These include distributing printed materials through canvassing and mailings. We have not given any donations directly to Candidate Committees, but if we were to do so, we would be limited to the current maximum of $357 per candidate. You seem suggest that the activities of a PAC will affect the “fairness” of an election. Certainly, you don’t believe that our support of your candidacy was unfair, because you did not at any time deny our support for you.

I agree with you that we should always have transparent elections, wherein all donations and expenditures are public records.  Rather than attack CHL-PAC, I suggest that you should call out NEXT and Triangle Blog Blog for not revealing their election funding (i.e. dark money), for their actions and attacks on homeowners truly undercut fair elections.

Regards,

Tom Henkel