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SARAH E. NASON 

JOHN O. SAWYKO 

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SUSAN B. GERSHON 

KAREN E. TANENBAUM 

January 28, 2024 

By email to Audit@fec.gov 

Nicole Burgess 

Audit Division 

Federal Election Commission 

1050 First Street, NE 

Washington, DC 20463 

Re: Draft Final Audit Report of the Audit Division on the 

1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East 

Federal Political Action Fund 

Dear Ms. Burgess: 

I am responding on behalf of the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East Federal Political 

Action Fund (“the Committee”) to the Draft Final Audit Report (DFAR) that the Audit Division provided 

to the Committee on January 9, 2024. The Committee addresses the three draft final findings in turn for 

the Commission’s consideration. The Committee does not request a hearing before the Commission. 

Interim Finding 1: Misstatement of Financial Activity 

As the DFAR observes, “[t]he cash on hand discrepancies for 2019 and 2020 resulted primarily 

from prior period adjustments as well as minor misstatements for disbursements during calendar year 

2020.” (DFAR, p. 5.) Both the Interim Audit Report (IAR) had recommended and the Committee agreed 

to amend its most recently filed report in order to correct the cash on hand balance. The Committee filed 

its Second Amended 2023 Mid-Year Report and an explanatory Form 99 on January 27 in order to do so. 

When the Committee submitted its response to the IAR on September 20 it anticipated submitting this 

amendment promptly. However, the Committee determined to undertake a comprehensive review of all of 

its reports since the audit period in preparation for that amendment, including in order to “correct any 

subsequent discrepancies that may affect the adjustment” on that report as the IAR recommended. This 

review, as well as a parallel review of matters unnrelated to the audit – principally, the itemization of 

contributors – prompted the Committee to make a series of amendments of reports both within and 

subsequent to the 2019-2020 audit period. Accordingly, on October 25 the Committee again amended the 

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last three 2020 reports; and on November 10 and 27 and January 27 the Committee amended its 2021-2022 

reports. The final amendments reverse the $77,860 increase, noted in the DFAR, that the Committee had 

first reported on its Second Amended Year-End 2020 Report filed on September 20, because that has since 

been determined to have resulted from an inadvertent arithmetic error during the amendment process. 

These final amendments, as well as the Second Amended Mid-Year 2023 Report, also correct for a 

$39,084.15 understatement of unitemized receipts on the Year-End 2021 Report; the omission of a 

$10,000 vendor refund on the 2022 October Quarterly report; and a few other corrections elsewhere 

involving negligible amounts. While the 2021-2022 reports pertain to a period subsequent to the period 

under audit, we do wish to stress that the Committee is satisfied that it has completed its amendment 

process and that those reports satisfy the requirements of 52 U.S.C. § 30102(i). And, this undertaking 

directly assisted the Committee’s further amendment of the Mid-Year 2023 Report in response to the 

audit. We request that the Final Audit Report relate that the Committee took all these measures and made 

these amendments. 

Interim Finding 2: Reporting of Apparent Independent Expenditures 

As the DFAR acknowledges, on September 20 the Committee filed amended 2020 October 

Quarterly, Pre-General, Post-General and Year-End reports, primarily in order to correct the 

misattributions to Line 29 of disbursements that should have been disclosed on Schedule E, and to update 

the estimates reflected on the 48-Hour and 24-Hour reports submitted during October and November 2020 

with information ascertained since. Especially notable is that the Committee’s digital advertising vendor 

was engaged to produce and disseminate digital advertising on various platforms, and the pricing for these 

and similar digital ads could not be known at the time, or within one or two days later when Schedule E 

reports may be due, because it depends in part on the actions of their recipients and the analysis of those 

results. The DFAR acknowledges the Committee’s explanation that has exhausted all available efforts to 

locate and provide all of the documentation described by the auditors, including by seeking records from 

the Committee vendor that handled the Committee’s digital advertising independent expenditure 

campaign, which that vendor asserts it no longer has. And, to be clear, the Committee withdraws its 

reference following the audit exit conference to a figure of $2.5 million of reported independent 

expenditures, because it does not reflect either the public record or the Committee’s internal records, all of 

which the Committee has used in making its best efforts to amend its audit period reports in order to reflect 

its actual independent expenditures during that period. 

Interim Finding 3: Recordkeeping for Communications 

The DFAR again acknowledges the Committee’s explanation concerning the unavailability of 

certain records in connection with its independent expenditures. The Committee has no further records of 

these communications to provide in response to the DFAR. The Committee reiterates its resolve, in the 

event it again undertakes independent expenditures, that it will contemporaneously secure all available 

information from its vendors in order for the Committee both to prepare its reports and to ensure 

compliance with its recordkeeping requirements without further reliance on vendors. 

*********** 

The Committee has devoted considerable staff and compliance consultant time and resources to 

rechecking and amending its reporting of independent expenditure activity during and since the audit 

period, and we recognize our obligation to have done so. We have provided all available records that are 

responsive to the Commission’s subpoena and the Audit Division’s requests. And, in preparing its 

amendments the Committee took a fresh look at everything in the original reports, regardless of whether 

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the Audit Division had inquired or raised issues about it. We believe that we have provided the most 

accurate accounting of the Committee’s activities as we can with the information at hand and secured. 

Thank you for your consideration. 

Yours truly, 

Laurence E. Gold 

Counsel to 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers 

East Federal Political Action Fund 

cc: Helen Schaub, Treasurer 

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