The Bob Stump story

by David Safier
Now that the Tucson Weekly has expanded the scope of the STO story from Steve Yarbrough to Bob Stump, let's take a look at how Bob Stump figures in.

One of the two School Tuition Organizations housed in Yarbrough's business condo, School Choice Arizona (SCA), deals only with corporate tax credit donations. Yarbrough has no direct connection with School Choice Arizona, though it pays him rent and uses the services of his company, HY Processing.

In 2007, while Bob Stump was a state representative, School Choice Arizona paid him $57,000 for fundraising. Since SCA raises corporate tax credit money, this meant that Bob Stump was going around to corporations asking them to write checks to SCA.The corporations, of course, would get 100% of their money back when they filed their tax returns.

Though there's nothing illegal here, it seems to me, when a state legislator in the majority Republican Party goes to a corporation with his hand out, there's no need to mention that he will be voting on legislation near and dear to the corporation's heart, and also its wallet. A prudent CEO might pony up a few corporate bucks — which he'll get back, of course — just to keep Stump happy and on his side.

But there's more. Stump was also running for Corporate Commissioner at the time. So the CEO or a representative was talking to a current legislator and a possible future Corporate Commissioner. That could double the speed a check was cut.

Bob Stump won, by the way. He's on the commission.

Was Stump a successful fundraiser? If you go to page 3 of the AZ Dept of Revenue's Corporate Income Tax Credit for Contributions to School Tuition Organizations for 2007, you'll see that SCA brought in a total of $3,209,000 from 9 corporate donors. That's an average of about $350,000 per donor — not a bad haul altogether.

I haven't looked into this myself, but I've heard that the names of the corporate donors and the amount they gave is not available to the public. I'm not sure why that information should be confidential, but I guess it is. It sure would be interesting to know the names of those 9 corporations to find out if any of them had reason to think they would benefit from having a friend in the legislature, and on the commission. (Remember, Yarbrough, who benefits financially from SCA's income, stayed in the legislature while Stump moved on the the Corporation Commission.)

Is any of this illegal? If Stump was worthy of his hire and put in the time as fundraiser, the answer is no. But should it be illegal, or a reason for the state to look into possible ethics violations? That's a whole different question.