Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic nominee for Maryland's open Senate seat, filed false financial disclosures to the Senate Ethics Committee in potential violation of federal law, a watchdog group alleged in a complaint filed Monday morning.
Alsobrooks has been dogged in the final weeks of her campaign for claiming improper tax breaks meant for senior citizens on her former Washington, D.C., rental property, costly decisions that landed the embattled Democrat a $47,500 bill for back taxes and interest in late September. This figure was only made public thanks to reporting by local news outlets. Alsobrooks should have disclosed her tax liability in her public Senate financial disclosure reports, the National Legal and Policy Center alleged in its complaint Monday. Alsobrooks has filed three such reports throughout her campaign, but none of them make any mention of her Washington, D.C., property tax bill.
"All liabilities over $10,000 are required to be reported," the watchdog group said in its complaint. "However, no tax liability was reported in Alsobrooks’s original candidate filing on Sept. 6, 2023, nor her annual report filed on Aug. 13, 2024, nor on her Amended report she filed two weeks later on Aug. 29, 2024. She has yet to further amend her reports to disclose this tax liability."
Alsobrooks, who makes more than $220,000 a year as county executive of Prince George’s County, missed the Oct. 31 deadline to fully pay her $47,500 property tax bill. Alsobrooks told reporters on Saturday that she paid off $17,600 of the balance—which correlates to the amount of tax credits she improperly received from 2003 through 2018—but has yet to pay any of the nearly $30,000 in interest penalties she also accrued for failing to pay her fair share of taxes for the better part of two decades.
"You know, we paid $17,000," Alsobrooks said. "We paid the amount of the credit that I received, and I’m working to pay off the interest."
The watchdog group complaint Monday indicates the property tax scandal could continue to serve as a thorn in Alsobrooks’s side even if she wins her election Tuesday against her Republican challenger, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. The final round of polls heading into election day show Alsobrooks with a sizable 11-point lead over Hogan, according to Real Clear Politics.
The National Legal and Policy Center highlighted additional "errors, irregularities, and omissions" in the financial disclosures Alsobrooks has filed throughout her Senate campaign. The group said in its complaint that the reporting flaws are so egregious that the Senate Ethics Committee may have to refer Alsobrooks to the Department of Justice "for the imposition of civil or criminal penalties" should it launch an investigation.
In her 2023 financial disclosure, for example, Alsobrooks disclosed a Prince George’s County pension plan worth up to $50,000. But in her two disclosures filed so far in 2024, that asset is nowhere to be found and Alsobrooks filed no transaction report to explain why she no longer has a county pension.
"What happened to it? If she liquidated that retirement account as it appeared that she did, that is a reportable transaction," the National Legal and Policy Center said in its complaint. "Alsobrooks either failed to disclose the income she apparently received from the distribution or failed to continue to disclose it as an asset in her subsequent reports."
Alsobrooks’s disclosures contain other discrepancies as well, the watchdog group noted. In her Aug. 13 financial disclosure, she listed her county salary as $228,658. Two weeks later, in her Aug. 29 amended disclosure, Alsobrooks lowered her salary to $221,898 without any explanation.
"All these omissions and irregularities are sloppy reporting at best for a former prosecutor who should know better or are substantive violations which she has yet to correct in an Amended Report, particularly the failure to report her liability to the D.C. tax authorities," the watchdog group said.
The Alsobrooks campaign did not return a request for comment.
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