Martin County Commissioner Susan Valliere and her husband, Jim, were found guilty Wednesday of several campaign finance violations, but the majority of the charges against the couple were dismissed by an administrative law judge.

Susan Valliere was found guilty of two counts and fined $2,000. Jim Valliere was found guilty of one count and fined $1,000.

State Administrative Law Judge Robert Meale, who heard the case in February, dismissed 108 other counts leveled against the couple; 28 of the original counts were against Susan Valliere, while Jim Valliere faced 83 counts.

Read the final order here.

The Vallieres couldn’t be reached for comment today.

The Florida Elections Commission case against the Vallieres stemmed from Susan Valliere’s primary re-election campaign in 2006 in which Jim Valliere acted as her campaign treasurer while also running a political action committee that supported her re-election.

The couple was accused of coordinating campaign activities and violating contribution limits.

Valliere had no opponent in the general election that year; she was first elected to office in 2002.

Meale wrote in his 48-page final order that it was “highly likely” that the Vallieres were estranged at various times during the campaign. The judge found that while the campaign and political action committee were “obstensibly united” in the goal of re-electing Susan Valliere, the two were also in competition with each other.

Meale did find, however, that Susan Valliere was guilty of failing to certify the correctness of her campaign treasurer’s report in two quarters in 2006, while Jim Valliere was found guilty of certifying a campaign treasurer’s report despite the omission of two contributions.

Tags: campaign violations, Jim Valliere, Martin County, Stuart, Susan Valliere

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Courts, Crime, Martin County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.