GALVESTON, Texas—Our elected officials want us to think they are running the government effectively and spending our tax money wisely.

But in Galveston, documented complaints accused some of those officials of running their campaigns carelessly and raising money for them recklessly.

The city council members who were targeted by the complaints said the errors were minor.

“You’ll find problems with almost all campaign finance forms. And they just made a hobby of it,” City Councilmember Elizabeth Beeton said.

On the island, it was kind of a mystery: Who were the people filing ethics complaints against the mayor and council? 

No one had ever heard of them.

In fact, 11 News had to go 75 miles north of Galveston to find one of them.

In Montgomery County, 11 News found Richard McDuffee.

“The elected officials, the school boards and people like that, they get very hot under the collar. They don’t like you looking under what’s going on,” McDuffee said.

McDuffee is a personal finance consultant, but in his spare time, he goes line by line through any reports he can get his hands on that say where public money is spent.

When he finds possible violations, he reports them to the state.

“You have to send them examples of everything you’re talking about,” McDuffee said.

There are several other citizen activists in Montgomery County doing the same thing.

They weren’t just picking on the Galveston City Council, either.  Previously, they’ve probed school boards, volunteer fire departments and homeowner’s associations.

“You start looking at all the hotel bills and all the food,” McDuffee said.

He said his pet peeve is when he finds small town officials going out of town for conferences and living it up.

When he looked into how city officials in Galveston kept track of their campaign money, he found that the mayor didn’t file a report on time, that a city councilmember supposedly took some contributions in cash instead of by check and that Councilmember Beeton didn’t list the street addresses of her contributors.

Sure, they’re not exactly high crimes, and some officials believe the complaints are a waste of time.

“I’m sorry this is what the ethics commission is reduced to, these kinds of small infractions that really don’t affect the public,” Beeton said.

So why does McDuffee do it?

He said we’re all expected to obey lots of little regulations, so why shouldn’t politicians?

“It’s kind of a peek into their personality. What other things are they letting slide?” McDuffee said.

One councilmember even agreed, saying it’s good to have citizens making sure those who make the rules also obey them.