Ethics officials say Mass. secretary of state used public resources for political gain

Massachusetts ethics regulators said Friday that Secretary of State William F. Galvin, the state’s top elections official, violated ethics law after he “prominently” put his name on voting signs and in voter information booklets distributed by his taxpayer-funded office, affording him “free positive publicity” amid his reelection bid in 2018.

In a letter released Friday, the state Ethics Commission said Galvin had “reason to know” that using his name on the publicly funded resources ahead of the election would give him “substantially valuable” and “unwarranted” political benefits as he successfully sought a seventh four-year term.

That included a voter information booklet his office mailed to every residential address in the state, which included a section touting the work of his Securities Division that referred to “Secretary Galvin’s office” 12 times on a single page. By contrast, the booklet simply refers to the “Secretary of the Commonwealth” on an adjacent page, the commission wrote.

His office also distributed 1,000 early voting signs to election officials throughout the state that the commission said prominently, and unnecessarily, featured his name, which gave the appearance and “likely the effect of campaign signs.”

Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/11/22/ethics-officials-say-mass-secretary-state-used-public-resources-for-political-gain/A9lh58iTVfem8xA2GAzFrO/story.html