The Senate State Affairs Committee voted unanimously this morning to award $18,060 in attorney fees and $1,711.84 in costs to Sen. Mark Nye, D-Pocatello, at the expense of his unsuccessful GOP challenger, Tom Katsilometes, who filed a formal contest of the election results that the same committee, and the full Senate, heard, considered and rejected. The recommendation now moves to the full Senate for a  final vote.

Addressing Katsilometes, Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, said, “You did not have a good-faith basis in fact or law to pursue the election contest. In my opinion, the election contest was without legal or factual foundation, and was pursued frivolously. … As a result of that, Sen. Nye was required to defend the county, he was required to defend the Board of Canvassers, he was required to defend the election process, and he was required to defend himself, and to do so all at his sole cost and expense.”

Katsilometes claimed violations of the state’s Sunshine Law requirements for campaign finance reporting, along with irregularities in vote-counting and tabulation. In his written arguments on the attorney fee issues, he claimed he’d proven that Nye had violated the Sunshine Law, and that the Senate excused the violation because other members might have committed similar violations . “He contends that the contestant shouldn’t be penalized for the Senate’s unwillingness to recognize a violation of Sunshine laws against its own members,” Davis said. But he said Katsilometes “misreads the position of the Senate and the actions of the Senate.”

An earlier complaint about Nye and Sunshine Laws was investigated by the Idaho Secretary of State’s office and rejected. Katsilometes charged that Nye did something wrong when he switched from running for another term in the House to running for an open Senate seat in the same district, after already having collected several campaign contributions, but the Secretary of State’s office found no violation.