Did you know that each Assemblymember gets “Member Communication” Money? There are rules about how it can be used.

For example in 2012, when Andy Pugno challenged Beth Gaines then of AD-04, Gaines’ office magically sent a monster piece of communication ONLY to the portion of her current Assembly District that was going to still be in the Newly formed AD-06. It is a time-honored tradition. In fact, Gaines sent over 2,000,000 pieces of “Assembly Mail” to her district – ostensibly to make up for the fact that she could not raise money on her own.

Well, lookie here. We have three ads that all ended today. These were on Mr. Brough’s Assemblyman Facebook Page.

Here is William Bill Brough’s campaign page. It has 18 likes. The Assemblyman Page has 4300 likes.

A closer check of the two pages shows that the Assemblyman Page has spent $3000 on Facebook Ads and the Campaign Page has yet to reach $100. (As of when I looked at it)

It is a 100% fair question to ask if Bill Brough has been abusing the state funds he is given for Constituent Communication in order to run Facebook Ads in an election season. There may be nuance and technicality at work here, but the question about the ethics of it remains.

Your intrepid blogger will be following up on this and may be adding this to the existing FPPC Complaint and investigation that is pending against him for abusing his campaign account.