Accusations Fly In School Board Race

One candidate for the Hernando County School Board is accusing the other of campaign filing misdeeds, but the candidate says he did nothing wrong.

Candidate Gene Magrini says fellow candidate James Yant has not properly documented the purchase of additional campaign signs and postage for campaign mailings sent out in August.

But Yant said he is following appropriate procedure, and said Magrini is simply "pulling for straws."

"I wonder why he's so worried about this," Yant said. "It's a non-issue. He's trying to create something that doesn't exist."

Magrini and Yant are running for the District 4 school board seat in November's general election. While Yant won the majority of the votes in the August primary, he did not have more than 50 percent of the votes, meaning he and Magrini will face off in November.

"He's just trying to distract me from what I'm doing," Yant said. "He should be trying to get some votes, rather than discredit me. He's trying to make people think I'm doing something (wrong)."

Magrini said he initially thought to examine Yant's campaign documents after an early August article in Hernando Today, in which Yant reported that dozens of his campaign signs were disappearing and that he had ordered more.

"I thought about it the other day and wondered if those were replaced, so I went online and looked at the report - and saw no campaign signs ordered there," he said. "His statement that he had already ordered replacements is either not accurate or the report isn't correct."

Yant said he ordered two batches of signs - both in June, according to campaign documents.

"I didn't purchase more signs (solely) because they were disappearing," he said. "I purchased more because I wanted to put more out."

Magrini said he also did not see payment for campaign postcards, postmarked Aug. 19, on Yant's reports.

"The law says you have to record your contributions and expenditures as they come in and file accordingly," Magrini said. "I think this is an important test for us about how detail-oriented we'll be (as school board members). We're being asked to manage taxpayers' money."

But Yant paid for postage through a pay-by-phone service, and said he did not record the postage at the time because he did not yet have a receipt. Customers prepay by check, and do not receive notification of the transaction until after the fact, he said.

"I needed to have the information on hand before I filed it," Yant said.

He said he received the receipt last week and had been preparing to file an amendment to his August report showing the expense. Candidates have until January to amend their campaign filing reports.

The next deadline for filing campaign reports is Sept. 19.

Magrini said he also attempted to notify Yant of the perceived error by e-mail, but Yant said he did not respond because he had not done anything wrong.

"I'm beyond playing games," he said. "We're not talking about a race for the president of the United States. We're talking about the school board in Hernando County and helping the children."