AUSTIN (KXAN) — Ethics complaints filed against two Austin City Council hopefuls and two Austin mayoral candidates won’t be resolved until after Election Day, the Austin Ethics Review Commission revealed this week.

Complaints against Austin Mayor Kirk Watson and mayoral candidate Doug Greco were scheduled for final hearings Wednesday, but were postponed.

“It was a little bit of a last-minute postponement … I didn’t love the fact of it, but sometimes things being what they are, that’s a decision that the chairman makes,” said Austin Ethics Review Commission Chairman Michael Lovins.

The final hearings for both mayoral candidates are expected to take place at the next regular meeting of the Ethics Review Commission on Nov. 13, more than a week after Election Day.

“I think this is the last day it could have happened before the election so I’m not asking to rush it now,” Greco said. “But I was prepared and I’ve returned over $6,000 and I look forward to the hearing.”

Meanwhile, complaints against City Council candidates Krista Laine of District 6 and Ashika Ganguly of District 10 were filed later — and preliminary hearings for those complaints are likely to be heard next month depending on the availability of meeting space and the body’s ability to get a quorum.

Complaint against Greco, Watson

The complaints against Watson and Greco allege that both candidates exceeded the amount of money they can take from donors outside the city limits.

Filed by former Ethics Review Commission member Betsy Greenberg, the complaint uses publicly available campaign finance records to show that both candidates exceeded the $46,000 limit set by the city.

An activist group called “Austinites for Less Corruption” in the late 1990s proposed limiting outside donations through a citizen-initiated petition. According to Greenberg, the petition passed with 72% of the vote in 1997.

The challenge, however — argued James Cousar, who represented Watson in his preliminary hearing — is that the rule doesn’t change how candidates must retrieve donor data, most notably addresses. This makes compliance and tracking compliance a real challenge.

“There is nothing in Texas law or the City of Austin campaign ordinance that requires any contributor to tell a campaign their home or residential address,” Cousar explained. He went on to tell the commissioners, “If the city of Austin wants to create a form … and say, so we can comply with the statute, the campaign has to report a home address, we will do that, but that’s not a current requirement.”

That’s where Cousar argued the discrepancy lay. While Greenberg said publicly available data points to Watson receiving $52,504.77 (excluding addresses such as PO boxes and businesses, which would bring that total to $68,104.77), the campaign for Watson provided KXAN documents that appear to show that the campaign followed up with donors who used an address outside the city limits and specifically requested and tracked home addresses.

Under that bill, the incumbent has only received $45,000 in contributions outside of Austin, in accordance with the rule, Cousar said and documents show.

Is the rule legal?

While Watson’s team argued that Watson had taken extra steps to comply with the rule and that it had not been represented in public records, Greco’s attorney pointed to a federal lawsuit over the rule, which has since been removed by a judge.

Greco — the former leader of Central Texas Interfaith — filed the lawsuit, saying the rule may be unconstitutional. He told KXAN after the dismissal that the judge did not rule on constitutionality, but rather pointed back to the city’s process unfolding.

“Why would my niece who’s going to vote for the first time, she’s 18…why can’t she donate to her uncle, but another candidate’s niece in west Austin can donate to their campaign? It’s not fair,” Greco said to reporters when he filed that lawsuit.

That sentiment was echoed in his preliminary hearing, along with assurances from Greco’s attorney that he was also following the rule.

“Mr. Greco has no interest in ignoring or mocking or knowingly or intentionally breaking the law. Rather, he filed his lawsuit because he feels it is incredibly important to follow the law and wants to be able to conduct his campaign while seeking clarification on what the law is from federal court, said Greco’s attorney, Holt Lackey.