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Matt Bunk's Column

Kelsch needs to focus on family and finances, not election

Written by: Matt Bunk

There is no excuse for a state lawmaker who repeatedly avoids paying taxes. Doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. Doesn’t matter how sincere the apology may be. It’s a serious breach of the law and of the public trust.

It might be easy to sympathize with Rep. RaeAnn Kelsch, who held a press conference last week to explain that the past few years have been difficult on her family. She recounted her brother’s suicide, medical problems of close family members and continuing marital problems with her husband.

Matt Bunk

But none of that is a valid reason for six years of unpaid income taxes totaling more than $300,000 including penalties and interest. There is no provision in the law that says you can avoid paying taxes if you have an understandable excuse, and Kelsch should know that as well as anybody.

Make no mistake: What Kelsch did is illegal. It’s a violation of law. And she is responsible, no matter how much smoke and how many mirrors she uses while on stage.

Kelsch’s speech to the media on Thursday came straight out of the playbook for political strategists who handle crisis management: Give the illusion of authority by holding a public appearance at a respectable venue; humanize the offender by displaying as many supportive family members as possible; offer detailed excuses while claiming responsibility for the misdeed; and cling to the elected position until all else fails.

It’s a recipe for sympathy. And sometimes it works.

Without a doubt, Kelsch is hoping voters will let her off the hook. Earlier this month she announced plans to seek re-election to her position in the North Dakota House of Representatives, where she chairs the Education Committee and serves on the Transportation Committee. And, after announcing that she had not paid income taxes since 2003, she told reporters that she plans to let voters decide whether she is fit to serve another term.

In other words, Kelsch isn’t planning to step down.

But this time Kelsch went too far. And voters in Mandan shouldn’t let good-nature and propensity toward forgiveness shroud the fact that she has made a mockery of her position more than once.

Last year, it was disclosed that Kelsch and her husband, Tom, owed more than $21,000 in delinquent property taxes on their home in Mandan, going back to 2008. Those bills have since been paid, but a three-year delinquency does not illustrate the good stewardship that should be required of our elected officials.

That, combined with unpaid income taxes, is nothing less than a pattern of tax evasion and abuse.

Kelsch promised to make things right. She said the taxes would eventually get paid. But at the same time, she aired a lot of dirty family laundry that was intended to shift the blame, including a bit about how her husband handles the family’s finances and didn’t come clean to her about the “extent” of the problems.

What Kelsch didn’t say is equally important. She didn’t claim that she was completely unaware that the taxes hadn’t been paid, and common sense dictates that she had to know about the delinquency.

When people fail to pay income taxes for several years, the federal government sends a lot of letters and makes a lot of phone calls to make sure all parties involved are fully aware that there’s a problem. The Internal Revenue Service also reports the delinquency to credit agencies, which then cut off access to loans and make it very difficult to gain access to things like credit cards.

Unless Kelsch had her head buried in the sand for the past several years, she had to know that she was violating state and federal tax laws.

Either way, her actions raise big concerns about her ability to manage her own affairs while also attending to the important business of drafting and voting on laws that the people of North Dakota will be required to follow.

On a personal level, Kelsch should be able to earn our sympathy and our understanding. After all, she was in an extremely tough situation. But on a professional level, it’s going to be difficult to earn back the kind of trust and respect necessary to serve in the Legislature.

Kelsch should respect the voters of her district enough to recognize that they deserve better. At the very least, she should put her candidacy aside and use the next few years to focus on her family and financial troubles.

Political campaigns can be stressful and ugly. It’s logical to conclude that the last thing Kelsch’s family needs right now is for her to stand under a very big spotlight for the next nine months.

-Matt Bunk is publisher of the Great Plains Examiner.

 

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Comments

  1. Pretty hard to say I didn’t know my husband hadn’t filed taxes, when filing joint returns requires signatures from both spouses.

    • This situation reminds me of another family that was finacially “Well Off” and didn’t pay their Taxes. One of the member in the family even stated to the public ” We don’t pay taxes. Only the Little people pay taxes”. This family were worth Billions. The person was Leona Helmsley. As a extra insult, Leona went to Prison on April 15 1992 (Tax Day). It is obvious, that RaeAnn doesn’t believe that the Laws governing paying your Fair Share of taxes per the Tax Code. If no one paid there Taxes, I dought if RaeAnn wood do her duties as a Represenative for free, because there would be no money to pay her. Possibly RaeAnn Kelsch believe the same as Leona Helsley. It is time to stop blaming others for your own personal mistakes. As far as the husband being stress out, $300,000.00 can buy a lot of face time with Doctos that specialize in stress Management. I personaly believe that RaeAnn under the Bus, so she could look like the she didn’t know anything about it.

  2. I wholeheartedly agree with your comments. I am very disappointed that she is not going to step down, although I’m not at all surprised from what I know of her. I don’t know how she thought listing all the hardships in her family would garner enough sympathy for people to forgive and forget. The list of hardships in my own immediate family during the last five years is too long to count, but none of us considered using those hardships as an excuse to not pay our taxes. I hope Mandan voters don’t forget about this come election time.

  3. Thanks for your bold comments – you hit it on the nose. Rep. Kelsch should step down, period. Family hardships do not excuse us from our responsibilities as citizens – the law is the law. There seems to be a puzzling acceptance of indiscretions out there lately from the ” values voters” crowd. Guess it depends on which political party one belongs to?

  4. I am dismayed that more is made of unpaid taxes than the DUI – both hers and Wrangham’s. DUI’s put people’s lives in danger. Wrangham should get this attention and asked not to run again. Kelsch too – mostly for the DUI though.

  5. Well said.

  6. Rep Kelsch stated over and over in her press conference that her husband was depressed and ill and unable to remember to pay his taxes for seven years. Yet at the same time he was a practising attorney bringing in well over a half million dollars a year. You have to make an awful lot of money to owe $300,000 in ND state income tax state even with penalties and interest. How well was he handling his clients interests if he was so depressed he couldn’t even file his own taxes?. He of course would not do his own taxes. Nobody in that income category does. He would just sign the forms prepared by his accountant. There is more to this than admitted. What about federal income taxes?

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