When a township official rakes nearly $30,000 into his campaign coffers since his last election, he’s probably gearing up for a hard-hitting run next time. For Jeff Boraski, there was no next time.
While federal campaign funding records showed a labor union flooded his committee with $27,850 since 2020, the Democratic Falls Township supervisor chose not to run for reelection this year. And before this March, he failed to submit required finance reports for roughly five years.
These events raise three major questions: Why did the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Political Action Committee give a legislator in a township of only about 34,000 people so much money? Why did the Bucks County Board of Elections, chaired by County Commissioner (and former Falls Supervisor) Bob Harvie, not send Boraski any late-filing notices after 2020? And what did Boraski, an IBEW member, do with all that money?
Boraski’s protracted failure to turn in finance reports for roughly five years made the latter question impossible to answer. This year, he finally submitted most of the disclosures he owed the election board. The documents lack clarity in some respects, but they’re plain in at least one detail: He admits he paid himself 65% of the money he raised between 2022 and 2024. His reports mostly describe those payments — totaling $15,184.48 — as “reimbursement.”
Again, mostly. One report, for instance, does not explain why Boraski bestowed $506.13 on himself in February 2022, despite Pennsylvania directing political candidates to describe each of their expenditures. Some descriptions, meanwhile, vaguely suggest the items for which he “reimbursed” himself, e.g., “reimbursement – parade,” “holiday toy drive,” and “reimbursed – fundraiser ticket.” Others still are wordy without being revelatory: “reimbursement – campaign,” “reimbursement – election,” “reimbursement – expenses,” or “reimbursement – fundraiser.”
Boraski’s previous neglect to disclose the Big Labor cash he received and spent actually goes all the way back to 2020, but that’s where it gets complicated. Election board staff did not locate any 2021 or 2025 campaign finance reports among the forms they said Friends of Jeff Boraski emailed their office on March 16, 2025. That leaves $5,000 that Boraski received from the IBEW in 2021 still apparently unreported. It also means that, barring some bureaucratic oversight, Boraski still hasn’t met his requirement to file numerous campaign finance summaries.
That obligation will only compound in time, since none of the reports he submitted indicate he terminated his committee. And that’s not the filings’ only weird omission: None of the new submissions were notarized. The commonwealth instructs Pennsylvania campaign committees to either fill out an unsworn statement in lieu of notarization for each report or get a notary to sign and stamp the report.
With the exception of two reports covering part of 2020, none of the documents Boraski gave the election board this year appear to satisfy this rule. Two unsworn statements accompanied reports covering Boraski’s campaign from January through mid-June 2020. Strangely, the Board of Elections timestamped one of those statements with the date “2025 Sep 15,” the very day The Independence visited the office to examine the reports. Boraski and his wife Dawn, his treasurer, nevertheless dated that form “7/9/2020” next to their signatures. None of his reports from 2022 or afterward bore timestamps.
Matt Wolfe, a Philadelphia-based Republican election lawyer who is not connected to any Falls campaigns, called failure to provide an unsworn statement or notarization “an amendable violation” of state campaign finance law, albeit one that could still slap the filer with a fine.
“That’s kind of a paperwork issue as opposed to a substance issue,” he said. On the other hand, he considered Boraski’s apparent lack of any reports for 2021, a year during which he got $5,000 from the IBEW, “a very, very serious violation.”
Wolfe said he found it unusual — though not necessarily illegal — that a candidate would “reimburse” himself 65% of the money his committee raised over a three-year period. He explained that examples of candidates definitively found to have used campaign funding for personal ends tend to occur in localities where one party dominates. (Falls Township is a Democratic stronghold with an all-Democrat board of supervisors.)
“It’s obviously an extremely high figure,” the attorney commented. “And the cynical among us might think that he is involved in politics to see what he can gain from it rather than to worry about the public good.”
Pennsylvania statute broadly defines campaign expenditures as disbursements made “for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.” The law’s generality can make enforcement against questionable political spending difficult.
Harvie’s connection
As The Independence and its parent site Broad + Liberty have reported, controversial IBEW contributions to Falls Township campaigns extend well beyond Boraski. Federal Election Commission figures show the union donated $36,500 to Falls Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff Dence (D) since 2021. Finance records available online and at the Bucks County courthouse indicate Dence has not disclosed any of that sum, making his use of it the sort of mystery that campaign finance laws are designed to prevent.
No evidence has yet emerged that Harvie, who served as a Falls supervisor from 2008 to 2020 and once shared a campaign committee with Dence, did anything to compel or even encourage his former colleagues to report their undisclosed cash. The election board he chairs did admonish Dence as recently as 2022 for having filed disclosures after their deadline, but none of the board’s letters mentions Dence’s omissions of IBEW contributions. Like Boraski, Dence is a member of IBEW Local 269.
That local is a target of a multi-year probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation which has been looking into allegations that Falls held up the permitting process for businesses at the IBEW’s behest to strong-arm the companies to hire union workers. Harvie has reportedly testified before a grand jury considering the issue.
Whatever the outcome of that case, the IBEW’s political arm has clearly invested copiously in Falls Township where Dence has received $234,000 since 2009 and Boraski has received $82,850 since 2012. They may have reported some of that money correctly, but it’s impossible to say how much since Bucks County only retains campaign finance records for the last five years.
Falls Supervisors Vice Chair Erin Mullen has also received thousands of dollars from the electrical workers’ federal PAC. She has properly reported those contributions, but she did not return a request for comment about Dence’s omissions — even though she now chairs his campaign committee. Neither Jeff Boraski, Dawn Boraski, Dence, Dence’s son and treasurer Jack, nor Dence’s former treasurer and township board colleague Jeff Rocco responded to an email asking for comment either.
Neither did the IBEW’s federal committee nor its Lawrenceville, NJ-based Local 269.
And neither did any member of the Bucks County Board of Elections. Not Harvie’s fellow Democrat Diane Ellis-Marseglia. Not Republican minority commissioner Gene DiGirolamo. And not Harvie himself, now a congressional candidate in Pennsylvania’s First District. Nota bene: Harvie’s local campaign outfit took $20,000 from the IBEW in 2023 alone.
Given the county’s apparent inaction, The Independence last Wednesday emailed the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees campaign finance enforcement, to ask if the agency knows about Boraski and Dence’s omissions and what response could be warranted. The department did not reply.
Loteckie takes $19,000 from IBEW
Tim Loteckie, the Democrat now running to replace Boraski as supervisor, also did not answer a comment request. Loteckie took $19,000 from the IBEW’s federal PAC since last year, though unlike Dence and Boraski, he is up to date on his campaign finance reports.
Jennifer Metzger, the Republican tax preparer running against Loteckie, said she finds these campaign funding anomalies troubling.
“What is it that they’re buying?” she said. “What is it that they have planned that we don’t know about? That’s the concern: $19,000 to do what…? I, at the end of the day, believe 100% that [some Falls supervisors and candidates] are being bought on a consistent basis.”
Metzger voiced concern that several major Loteckie backers include those with business before Falls Township. Those include its engineer Joseph Jones and its solicitor Michael Clarke, both of whom donated $2,500 in April. They also include a PAC connected to Waste Management, Loteckie’s own employer.
Many got late-report notices; Boraski didn’t
While the Harvie-led Board of Elections went for years without issuing a notice to Boraski for being extremely slow to file his campaign finance summaries, they did send Metzger such letters in May and June, fining her $120.
The GOP candidate is one of many Falls Township figures from both parties to incur the scrutiny of the election board for late filings. Harvie himself received a letter in November 2023 and was fined $20. Falls Township Democratic Supervisor John Palmer (D) received letters in 2019 and 2022. Both the Falls Township Democratic and Republican Committees got enforcement missives in recent years. So did Jason Lawson, a Democrat who ran against Loteckie in the primary.
Countywide candidates have gotten notices too. Both Republican District Attorney Jennifer Schorn and Democratic sheriff candidate Danny Ceisler received them this year. It’s not easy to escape them if you file late.
Unless you’re Jeff Boraski, to whom the county has no record of sending an enforcement letter since 2019, well before his issues related to the IBEW came to light.
“He gets nothing because there’s something to hide there, and I don’t know what it is,” Metzger lamented.
Other unanswered questions
The IBEW wasn’t quite Boraski’s only benefactor. Jeff Dence donated $2,000 to the supervisor in April 2022. Rocco gave Boraski $500 that same month. Why they did so when Boraski ultimately wouldn’t seek reelection remains a curiosity.
Other questions linger as well. When Boraski reported that he spent money on fundraisers, did he mean his own or those of other candidates? (If he meant his own, they were poorly attended to say the least, given how few donors he can boast.) Can Boraski prove that he actually spent his “reimbursements” on campaign-related items? Has the election board or any member of it contacted Boraski or Dence in an effort to compel proper financial reporting?
To answer these questions, The Independence has record requests pending.
Bradley Vasoli is the senior editor of The Independence.
