April 04, 2008 08:24 PM UTC

Bob Schaffer, David Brennan and D'Oh!

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• by: Colorado Pols

We wrote in August that Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer was trying to deflect charges that donations he received from David Brennan influenced his votes on a shaky charter school connected with Brennan.

Schaffer’s connection with Brennan could be getting worse in light of a couple of recent stories out of Ohio. From The Columbus Dispatch:

A record $5.2 million fine was levied yesterday by the Ohio Elections Commission against a pro-charter-school group that helped elect Republicans across Ohio in 2006.

The whopping fine fell on All Children Matter, a Michigan-based organization that the commission said illegally funneled $870,000 in campaign contributions through its Virginia political-action committee to its PAC in Ohio in 2006. David Brennan of Akron, Ohio’s biggest charter-school operator, has donated $200,000 to the group.

Voting 5-0, the bipartisan commission agreed with the secretary of state’s argument that All Children violated Ohio campaign finance laws that limited PAC contributions to $10,000.

The fine amount was unheard of, particularly from a commission that is regularly criticized by watchdog groups and others for going light on campaign-finance violators. Philip C. Richter, executive director of the commission, said his previous highest recommendation for a fine was about $90,000.

This certainly doesn’t make Schaffer’s involvement with Brennan look very good. And neither does this story from The Cincinnati Enquirer:

One of the Ohio’s largest teachers unions is challenging the tax-exempt status of schools run by the state’s largest operator of charter schools.

The Ohio Federation of Teachers on Thursday sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service asking it to investigate the nonprofit, tax-exempt status of at least 25 of the charter schools run by White Hat Management Inc.

White Hat, a for-profit company based in Akron, operates 31 charter schools in Ohio, including four Cincinnati-area schools: Life Skills Centers in Middletown, Walnut Hills and Roselawn, and Riverside Academy, a Hope Academy in Riverside. Its Ohio schools serve more than 9,000 students; the schools received about $85 million in state revenue last year, the union said.

The company also operates schools in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania [Pols emphasis]…

…Also, at least 95 percent of these schools’ revenues – mainly Ohio education dollars – are “passed through” to for-profit White Hat entities.

Many White Hat schools lease or sublease their buildings from White Hat entities. Sometimes those arrangements are profitable for White Hat and expensive for the schools, Taylor said.

For instance, one Cleveland-area White Hat school subleasing from a White Hat subsidiary pays that subsidiary’s “base rent” of $48,000 a year plus an additional 6 percent of the school’s annual revenue over $800,000 a year. That becomes profit for White Hat, the letter says.

White Hat staff and attorneys – not the nonprofit boards or authorizers – negotiated contracts with the Ohio Department of Education to create many of the White Hat schools, the letter states. Sometimes, Ohio’s Education Department staff corresponded with White Hat founder David Brennan and his company attorneys on school matters, rather than with the schools’ governing boards.

This story seems like it is only going to get worse, and if it does, Schaffer’s ties to the whole for-profit charter school industry are going to be a major drag on his Senate campaign.