Claims were circulated in some quarters that these issues had never been raised before to the LNC Executive Committee. I quote from the LNC Executive Committee Minutes, available to all LPUS members at archive.lp.org:
LNC ExComm Teleconference
September 26, 2000
“…Dehn asked why the EC has not been receiving updated financial information on a regular basis.
Dasbach said he has been swamped. He said that he would send out a report the following day.
Dehn said that he has not received an income sheet and a balance sheet in some time.
Givot said that he has not received one in several months. Dasbach said that he would discuss this with Nick Dunbar.”
And at the March 13 LNC 2001 ExComm meeting, Michael Gilson asked if a written copy of the National Director’s report on “outstanding accounts payable” had been emailed. The National Director, among other things, reported that there is a technical limitation on LNC financial software “which precludes generation of reports in a given year until the prior year’s books are closed.”
I discussed this final statement with several persons knowledgeable in financial reporting software. There was agreement that it was possible for a firm using paper ledgers to need three months to close its books on a year. It is, however, surprising to read that in a party with a large number of computer-literate members that the Executive Committee and its staff had to go nearly a quarter of a year without getting detailed financial reports. This difficulty has since in part been fixed; in 2002 the Party closed its books for 2001 in late January.
On April 21, 2001, Mark Tuniewicz’ resignation became effective. At the LNC meeting, At-Large representative Lois Kaneshiki offered a motion that the LNC should determine why Tuniewicz resigned before appointing a replacement. The motion was rejected. The LNC instead appointed Deryl Martin as the new National Treasurer.
Other issues related to the Tuniewicz resignation appeared as an exchange of public missives between Tuniewicz and Bumper Hornberger. Hornberger wrote as a small part of a much longer letter:
“LNC members serving on the Bylaws Committee included LP National Treasurer Mark A. Tuniewicz, who recently and without explanation resigned his post and his membership in the party and who so far has declined to come forward and disclose whether or not he has information about the use of third-party intermediaries to funnel money to third-party beneficiaries.”
Your author is not aware of any occasion prior to this statement in which the question of third-party beneficiaries had been raised prominently. I am certainly not aware of prior occasions on which Tuniewicz had actively declined to answer questions on the topic. Tuniewicz promptly disclosed his information, responding:
“With the exception of the recent disclosures by Mssrs. Famularo, Willis & Browne, I don’t recall LNC, Inc. or the Browne campaign utilizing 3rd party intermediaries to funnel money to third-party beneficiaries … with one exception:”
Tuniewicz went on to detail the exception, to which we return in our discussion of events in scenic Massachusetts. The exception involved not the Browne-Bergland events but efforts to groom a successor to Browne. Tuniewicz concluded his letter
“Other than this item, I don’t recall any use of intermediaries from 1996 when I joined the LNC through the end of my term as National Treasurer earlier in 2001. I’d like to stress that these issues have absolutely nothing to do with my resignation as Treasurer and from the LP. Any suggestion to the contrary is libelous…
With best wishes,
Mark A. Tuniewicz”
Tuniewicz’s acts and statements were for many Libertarians a significant indication that difficulties in the National Party did not just represent the complaints of a particular faction within the party. The unrolling Browne nomination scandal provided another.
And now we have reached Chapter One of this book, for at 4 in the afternoon on April 21, 2001 John Famularo distributed to the Libertarian National Committee the remarkable Willis invoice.
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