A Dallas-area lawmaker has spent more than $200,000 in campaign donations to pay rent on an Austin condo -- paying rent to her own husband, that is -- and the state Ethics Commission says that's just fine.

The Ethics Commission took two years and seven months to consider the complaint filed by a Houston-area Democratic blogger against state Sen. Jane Nelson, a Republican from Flower Mound. The commission ruled last week that they're dismissing the complaint, saying "there is credible evidence that no violation of law or rule administered and enforced by the commission has occurred."

Capitol reporter Jay Root broke the story in February 2007 that Nelson had been paying campaign cash for nearly a decade to rent a condo her husband owns in the swanky Westgate complex. (Root now works for the Associated Press' Austin bureau, but he wrote for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at the time; a printout of his story was included with the ethics complaint)

Three months after Root's story appeared, blogger John Cobarruvias, who writes at Bay Area Houston, filed a formal complaint with the state ethics commission. He alleged that Nelson broke a state election law banning payments to spouses for campaign expenses, as well as another law banning candidates from making payments to any business of which the candidate owns 10 percent or more.


“In every other ethics complaint that was filed we were, at the very least, given an explanation of why the complaint was dismissed," Cobarruvias told me in an e-mail. "In this case after 2 full years, we were provided absolutely nothing about the allegations. The donors and the citizens of Texas are entitled to transparency in our elected officials ethics reports.”

In its response letter to Cobarruvias, informing him that the commission had dropped his case, the Ethics Commission said Nelson had indeed given $214,250 in campaign money over a nine-year period to an entity called "Twin Star" -- which, Root wrote, was a name once used by Nelson's husband's business. The Ethics Commission said the payments were made to lease a condo.

Nelson, Ethics Commission Executive Director David Reisman wrote, "did not use political contributions to make or authorize expenditures to compensate her spouse for personal services, or make or authorize expenditures from political contributions to a business in which the respondent had a participating interest of more than 10 percent, held a position on the governing body, or served as an officer of the business, and did not make or authorize payments from political contributions to purchase real property or pay the interest on or principal of a note for the purchase of real property."

A message we left a week ago Monday with a press officer in Nelson's Austin office was not returned. Ethics Commission spokesman Tim Sorrell said he couldn't comment because of state laws ensuring confidentiality of ethics complaints that are dismissed.