Former GOP Rep got Fee Office, Funneled Thousands to Cooper

Former GOP legislator Tom Burcham used a legislative committee he controls to move thousands of dollars, at least $5000 of which came from his own pocket, to Rep. Nathan Cooper in the wake of receiving the Farmington fee office. Cooper, a close friend and ally of Blunt appointments director James Harris, used his campaign and legislative district committees to facilitate the receipt of money from more than a half-dozen individuals who received fee offices, including Burcham.

On February 9, 2005 former state representative Tom Burcham was one of more than one hundred individuals whom the Blunt administration announced would be the new fee agents for license offices around Missouri. One month later would begin a series of transactions that would span the course of a year and during which more than $6900 would move from entities controlled by Burcham to committees controlled by Nathan Cooper. These transactions utilized legislative district committees at both ends to obscure the source and destination of those dollars, and used faulty reporting to further cloud the exchange.

For a number of years Tom Burcham has controlled, as Deputy Treasurer, the legislative district committee for the seat he once held --the 106th District Republican Committee. Ordinarily, legislative committees like the 106th are used to help state candidates circumvent contribution limits, since candidates can take significantly more dollars per cycle from those committees than they can from an individual or corporate entity. But Burcham's use of his committee was curious in that a key function appeared to be its use as a fund for facilitating unique benefits for himself.

On March 14, 2005 --about a month after being named Farmington fee agent-- Burcham's 106th district Republican committee began its string of giving by making a seemingly innocuous contribution of $300 to Friends of Nathan Cooper. That was just the beginning.

On June 17, 2005 Burcham's 106th District Committee sent $500 to the 158th District Republican Committee --the legislative committee that Cooper controls and into which thousands of dollars from other fee agents was also raised. At about the same time, Burcham also gave $500 in personal money to the 158th.

About halfway through September 2005, Burcham --who by this time had run the fee office for more than 6 months and was likely turning a nice profit-- gave $5,000 of his personal money to the 106th district committee. But that money didn't stay put for long.

One month later, the 106th district committee turned around and made a $1,500 contribution to Cooper's 158th legislative district committee. Then in early December, the 106th district committee contributed $2,500 to Cooper's campaign committee, Friends of Nathan Cooper.

Just after the new year, Burcham's committee continued its fee office payment installment plan by making a contribution of $3,000 to Friends of Nathan Cooper. Oddly, Burcham's committee also reports receiving a contribution in the same amount from Friends of Nathan Cooper on the same day. However, reports filed by Friends of Nathan Cooper --while they confirm the $3,000 receipt-- show no record of having given $3,000 to the 106th during that quarter. Cooper's reports indicate only that his campaign committee refunded a "primary overage" of $1,375 to the 106th legislative district committee on March 31st of 2006.

Even counting the "overage" refunded by Cooper to the 106th, the above transactions amount to a sum of at least $6925 that Burcham or committees controlled by Burcham moved to Cooper's committees in the year immediately following the award of the Farmington fee office.

Once again we find Nathan Cooper and his committees at the nexus of fee office awardees, large sums of political money, and contrived contribution and reporting schemes. While the Blunt-Harris-Cooper cabal would prefer that we simply attribute this to coincidence, such explanations become untenable when the same set of bizarre circumstances repeat themselves over and again in the documented historical record. Something's going on, and it's not kosher.

It's time for all the players in this scam to come clean.