Tea Party Groups Awaken From Holiday Slumber to Fight IRS Rules

After getting off to a slow start, conservative tea party groups are pushing back on the Internal Revenue Service’s new proposal to regulate tax-exempt groups.
It’s the latest chapter of a saga over the targeting of conservative groups throughout the 2012 election that exploded over the summer of 2013. And it comes nearly a month and a half after the IRS first revealed its proposed rules in late November.
The IRS’s Thanksgiving-week announcement of new rules to rein in tax-exempt groups that participate in political activities caught many by surprise — especially conservative groups.
Most of Washington left town for the holiday season as the clock ticked on the roughly 90-day window for public comment on the proposed rules.
“They seem hell bent to do whatever they’re setting out to do because of the way they issued the rules and the fact that the comment period happens during the holiday season,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks.
“I think changing the rules in an election year is extraordinarily unfair and unprecedented,” he added.
Kibbe’s organization over the weekend urged its members and affiliates, which include tea party groups across the country, to submit comments opposing the proposed rules.
The comments would be considered by the IRS in crafting, or abandoning the final regulations.
The response was impressive, more than 10,000 people responded to the plea within 24 hours, Kibbe said. And as of Monday, more than 3,000 comments had been submitted.
On Monday, another tea party group, ForAmerica, launched its own push to oppose the IRS rules. Initially, it seemed that the two groups had launched an orchestrated rollout, but Kibbe said they didn’t coordinate with ForAmerica on the effort.
“The holiday season prevented what would typically have been a more coordinated response,” he noted.
ForAmerica has put six-figures behind its social media and digital ad effort, the group said.
Months after the IRS scandal first erupted, several other issues, and a largely fruitless congressional investigation by Republican lawmakers, has caused the issue to fade from prominence.
Tea party activists are still plenty angry at the IRS. But they are now forced to build public outrage in a very brief window of opportunity and at a time when the midterm elections are quickly heating up. And when the missteps by the Obama administration in implementing the health care law seems — at the moment — to be a more promising line of attack in the 2014 elections.
Yet Kibbe believes that if the IRS rules are allowed to go into effect, it could hamper the efforts of tea party groups seeking to operate in this cycle.
“I think it has to be about public opinion,” Kibbe said. “On any promulgation of regulations, it’s a very insider, complex, closed process by any definition.”
“We need to get people to pay attention to this in a very short period of time,” he said.
IRS officials say that they are proposing new rules to reduce or eliminate the guesswork that led some agency employees to unnecessarily stymie groups applying for tax-exempt status based on concerns that their political activity might exceed the legal limits for 501c(4) groups.
Among the rules are that a group’s primary activities cannot include voter registration drives, events with candidates that occur within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.
Tea party groups believe the rules would do more to hurt small, “mom and pop” 501(c)4 groups, rather than the big players like Republican operative Karl Rove’s group, Crossroads GPS, which spent tens of millions of dollars in the 2010 election.
But others say the rules are finally establishing some basic guidance in a wild wild west of campaign finance uncertainty.
“The truth of the matter is that the current rules are a morass and many nonprofits are using that to their advantage,” said Ken Gross, an election lawyer and former associate general counsel of the Federal Election Commission.
“Anything that would add clarity that would make the laws more enforceable I think end up being something that the groups oppose because they have used the current morass of laws to their benefit,” he said.

Chris Christie Officials Messed With Bridge Traffic Despite Being Warned About Congestion Problems

WASHINGTON -- New documents reveal that a high-ranking official in the administration of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) knew that Fort Lee, N.J., had issues with traffic congestion around the George Washington Bridge, long before he authorized a seemingly unnecessary study that closed down lanes to the bridge and made traffic even worse.
Fort Lee is an essential access point to New York City, serving as the gateway to the George Washington Bridge, which is the busiest bridge in the United States. In November 2010, Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich (D) wrote to Bill Baroni, deputy director of the Port Authority of New York and Jersey, and complained of traffic problems in the borough. The letter was obtained by The Record in a public records request.
"On approximately 20 occasions in the last forty days, our Borough has been completely gridlocked," wrote Sokolich to Baroni, who was Christie's top official at the Port Authority. "Traveling from the south to the north end of our Borough takes upwards of one hour. Our safety vehicles are unable to traverse our own thoroughfares to attend to emergencies which place our residents in harms way."
Despite these concerns, on Sept. 9, 2013, Sokolich woke up to find that two of the three local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge had been closed, causing dangerous traffic jams in the borough on the first day of school. Neither he nor Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye -- who was appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) -- were given any advance warning.
The closures were ordered by David Wildstein, then the director of interstate capital projects and an ally of Christie's. They came just weeks after Sokolich refused to endorse Christie's reelection bid. On Sept. 12, Sokolich said he believed the closures were "punitive," although he later backed off that accusation.
Baroni has stated that the closures were part of a traffic study, implying that Fort Lee may not need three access lanes.
"Every one of you, every one of you on this committee has people in your communities who sit in longer traffic every day because of the special lanes for Fort Lee," Baroni said in November.

But he acknowledged that no one ever sought approval for the study, which, without an alternative route, was guaranteed to create traffic congestion.

According to The Record, a bridge official said Wildstein also specifically instructed him to keep the lane closures secret from Fort Lee officials. And records indicate, according to the paper, "that traffic engineers predicted it would lead to 600-vehicle back-ups during the morning rush hour that would not subside until noon."
Wildstein and Baroni have since resigned and hired attorneys to represent them.
In a Dec. 17 press conference on the controversy, Christie stood by Baroni's explanation for the closures, saying that while his appointees did not go through the proper channels for the closures, there was no malicious or political intent in what they did.
Still, the controversy has continued to dog Christie, who is considered a possible 2016 presidential contender. Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, has asked the Transportation Department to review what happened in Fort Lee.
"While this type of decision tends to be local in nature, I am concerned about the larger federal implications of what appears to be political appointees abusing their power to hamper interstate commerce and safety without public notice," wrote Rockefeller in his letter to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
The inspector general of the Port Authority is also investigating the closures, and several state legislators continue to look into the matter.
Last week, Christie said the controversy was "not that big a deal" even though reporters were "obsessed" with it.