Stilo Wants To Buy Another Town Council
July 31, 2016
Stilo backed “Tusayan’s Future” with help from business partner Logan Luca is paying for some feel-good videos touting the current Town Council. And it may have violated campaign finance law.
Logan Luca owns half of Camper Village and it’s a Stilo partner along with Elling Halvorson.
Halvorson and Stilo employ all members of the Tusayan Town Council.
Stilo strongman Tom DePaolo is in charge of Logan Luca. Here is a link to the Corporation Commission filing. http://ecorp.azcc.gov/Details/Corp?corpId=L10068168
Recently Logan Luca has been spending money on videos encouraging Tusayan to support the current town council. That would make sense as the current council seems to be firmly in Stilo’s corner when it comes to its controversial development which has failed thus far to deliver suitable housing as it promised. After five years of incorporation, Stilo has mismanaged things so badly nothing has been built and only 20 affordable housing units are on the table at 10X. It remains to be seen how these units will have access to water. It also remains to be seen which 20 residents will get these homes as the household income limit is $250,000 a year.
The video which was posted on social media May 26th touts the virtues of the current town council. It also contains a disclaimer at the end and tells people to vote August 30th. It looks and sounds like a political ad. Yet the expenditure for this ad is not contained in Tusayan’s Future’s campaign finance report. That report is supposed to cover expenditures through the end of May. Instead Tusayan’s Future filed a No Activity Statement. Here is a link.
If you want to influence voters through paid advertisements, you have to disclose that information. It’s the law.
Tusayan resident Janet Rosener is the Chairman of Tusayan’s Future. Its Treasurer is Tim Sifert, currently the Communications Director for the Arizona Republican Party. Here is a link to its statement of organization.
Tusayan’s Future put out a second video criticizing ‘outside interests.” It’s worth noting that the people who stand to make millions off the Stilo development are absentee landlord Elling Halvorson, and Stilo which is based in Italy. This video was posted after June 1st, so technically it does not violate the law unless you assume that money was not spent for it prior to June 1st.
Strangely enough the video claims ‘outsiders’ want to control the Town Council. That’s an odd claim when all of the candidates either work for Stilo or its business partner Elling Halvorson. Who is Stilo and Logan Luca supporting or opposing? Did they make this ad assuming other’s might be running?