Ex-Campaign Workers ‘Had To Say We Were Volunteers’

Three former campaign workers for Kootenai County Commissioner Dick Compton say they were told to tell people they were volunteers, even though they were getting paid.

“I couldn’t understand it. If we were volunteers, why’d we get paid?” said 14-year-old Sarah Swearingen.

She and two other local teens also told The Spokesman-Review that they didn’t fill out any tax or citizenship forms. Federal law requires companies to have employees fill out such documents, said state and federal tax officials.

“It would appear that these would be employees, and were subject to witholding,” said Laurel Morgan, an Internal Revenue Service spokeswoman in Boise.

All three Coeur d’Alene teens have told The Spokesman-Review they were among several paid “volunteers” doing telephone work during the final few weeks of Compton’s campaign last year. To do the work, Compton hired Q and A Communications, a Coeur d’Alene telemarketing firm.

“A lot of people asked us who we were,” said Steven Teachout, 18. “We had to say we were volunteers for Citizens for Better Government.”

Fourteen-year-old Katie Darretta also said she filled out no forms and was told to say she was a volunteer.

Compton acknowledged that his campaign used some paid telemarketers to bolster the campaign’s volunteers. But he said the hiring and training was done by Q and A.

“I wasn’t in on the training session and have no idea what they were told,” he said. He said he planned to look into it.

At Q and A Communications, managing partner Sandy Clark said the company didn’t think it had to fill out the forms for short-term employees.

“It depends on who you talk to. It’s kind of a bureaucratic nightmare,” said Clark, who commissioners appointed to the county planning commission shortly after the election.

If the forms were required, he said, the error wasn’t intentional.

He also said he doubted the teens were told to say they were volunteers.

“I can’t imagine why anyone would want that,” he said. “The directions were extremely clear.”

Compton’s campaign manager, his daughter Deborah Compton, said the teens weren’t considered employees.

“They were casual labor,” she said. “We didn’t know who would be there on a nightly basis.”

“I think it’s interesting that the press focuses on something as trite as who Dick Compton hired,” she said, “and don’t focus on any of the good things the county’s doing.”

Based on the teens’ descriptions of the work and hours, officials at the Idaho Tax Commission and the federal Internal Revenue Service say tax and citizenship forms should have been filed.

Even short-term workers generally are considered employees, except for a few narrow exceptions, the officials said.

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