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Candidates who were required to file an amended campaign finance reports met the Sept. 4 deadline for re-filing their corrected mistakes, according to the city's legal department.

All but three of the 26 candidates seeking public office this fall were cited for mistakes in their reports, filed on Aug. 17. Letters were sent out to candidates on Aug. 26 requiring them to either file amended reports or to correct in future filings.

Two candidates, Republican alderman candidate Senitta Conyers and Republican mayoral candidate, Clint Hoffman, were even threatened with a referral to the State's Attorney's Office for not reporting their contributions and expenditures at all.

As of Tuesday, 12 candidates — including Hoffman and Conyers — had filed amended reports, and there were no outstanding mistakes, officials said. Hoffman, who said that he wouldn't file an amended report, said that he decided to avoid any problems.

"After I got over the initial being pissed off, I just wanted to get it out of the way," Hoffman said of his decision.

City election officials decided last week that because of the number of mistakes, a training session on how to properly file a campaign finance reports is necessary.

The violations noted in the letters sent to candidates range from the failure to classify contributions as cash or check to neglecting to set up a bank account with a financial institution.

The majority of the other candidates have the same, relatively minor violation — "failure to pass personal contributions and expenditures through treasurer," which means expenditures not paid for directly from the candidates' designated campaign bank account, and occurs mostly when candidates reimburse themselves for campaign purchases.

Some city election officials were less sympathetic. "I hate to get into the hand-holding business…," said Robert Bennett, secretary for the city's board of election supervisors. "The forms are so simple. I just don't understand the difficulty."

The board said it will hold the training somewhere between Sept. 28 and Sept. 30. The next deadline for campaign finance reports in Oct. 5.

Email Erica L. Green at egreen@gazette.net.