Sen. Dina Neal Faces Allegations of Misusing Campaign Funds for Home Expenses

2023-05-26 07:00:00

Sen. Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, speaks during the 82nd Session of the Legislature in February 2023 in Carson City. (Ellen Schmidt/Las Vegas Review-Journal) Sen. Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, listens to bill presentations in the Senate during the 82nd Session of the Legislature in February 2023, in Carson City. (Ellen Schmidt/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @ellenschmidttt

North Las Vegas city officials met with police this week to discuss concerns that state Sen. Dina Neal may have used campaign funds to pay off a $20,000 lien on her home, the Las Vegas Review has learned. -Journal.

Neal strongly denied the accusation Wednesday, saying he refinanced his home with his own money.

“I have never misused my campaign funds,” he told the Review-Journal.

According to an official with knowledge of the matter, the meeting with law enforcement took place following the news organization requested public documents from the city. The records revealed years of emails from Neal, some of which ask staff to forgive First-Time Homebuyer Assistance Program loans. In at least two of those emails, Neal did not disclose that he had such a loan.

The public documents include a letter from April 2021 demanding Neal repay the city. The city provided a copy of the loan payment check he received from a title insurance company, dated May 19 of that year, and records show it was deposited on May 25.

On May 24, Neal charged his campaign $20,499 for Zoom expenses, according to a campaign finance report he filed with the state for that year.

‘It was an administrative error’

Neal’s attorney, Bradley Schrager, called it an “obvious” typo. The report shows Neal has numerous monthly Zoom charges of $204.99, and on Thursday, Neal provided the Review-Journal with a receipt showing a May 24, 2021, Zoom charge for that amount.

The receipt “shows that it was a clerical error,” Neal wrote in an email to the newspaper.

Later in the email he stated: “The lender paid the down payment assistance with the equity in my home. That’s how refinancing works.”

Neal’s campaign expenses for that year totaled more than $65,000.

It is a crime to use campaign funds for personal expenses, and at least two Nevada lawmakers have been convicted of this offense in recent years.

The meeting between North Las Vegas and law enforcement focused on “the results of the public records request for the municipal levy and the unusual charge found in Neal’s campaign spending report,” said the official, who spoke on condition remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

The source would not disclose which agency the city met with or who initiated the meetings.

Neal, D-North Las Vegas, has been in the state Senate since 2020 and previously served 10 years in the Assembly. In a phone interview Wednesday, he strongly denied wrongdoing and said the city was acting in bad faith.

“North Las Vegas has no reason to come for me,” Neal said. “Why don’t you ask them why they’re coming for me in the first place? Through Windsor Park?

Neal supports a bill in the Legislature that would force the city to pay $20 million to rehouse Windsor Park families whose homes were built on top of a slowly sinking aquifer.

Tensions have grown between Neal and the city during this session. This month, Neal accused city officials of lying regarding his plan to buy the land where Texas Station once stood.

The mayor declined to comment.

City spokeswoman Kathleen Richards declined to comment for this report. So did Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown and Councilor Isaac Barron. Other council members might not be reached for comment.

Neal said the news regarding the law enforcement meeting is part of an ongoing “smear campaign.”

Earlier this month, the Review-Journal reported that she is the subject of a state investigation following a college professor claimed that she pressured him to direct $20,000 in federal funds for local businesses to his friend, the police officer in North Las Vegas Donavan McIntosh.

McIntosh filed a racial discrimination lawsuit once morest the city.

College of Southern Nevada business professor Kevin Raiford, who filed the complaint, said he was kicked out of the multimillion-dollar tax-funded NV Grow grant program last year following he refused to award money Neal had requested. . Raiford said the funding is intended for companies that meet strict financial requirements.

Neal called Raiford’s accusations once morest her “defamatory” and a “red herring,” and later issued a statement saying she has always behaved ethically.

In her complaint, Raiford wrote that Neal wanted to use the money to pay off a loan she had given McIntosh to start his clothing business.

In the spring of 2021, Neal was refinancing his home, according to city documents obtained by the Review-Journal through its public records request. She bought the house in 2010 through the Homebuyer Assistance Program and had to pay the city in order to do so.

Since Neal had bought his house, the terms of the program had changed to lower the loan amount and allow new loan forgiveness, but those changes were not retroactive.

After being told the new terms did not apply to her, Neal wrote to Rick Damian, the city’s manager of housing and neighborhood services, in an email dated July 3, 2017: “I promise I’m going to find a way to remedy this, because this is not right and it is a detriment to me.

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