05:56 PM CDT on Friday, April 15, 2005

By Doug Miller / 11 News

Houston's next election day is still seven months away. But a city council candidate is already facing questions over his campaign finance reports.

But what's behind the campaign cash questions?

KHOU-TV

Jay Aiyer's opponent claims finance reports indicate he personally took $6,000 in campaign funds to repay a loan he made to his campaign. But she claims there is no record of that loan.

When politicians spend campaign money they're supposed to keep track of it in their campaign finance reports.

His opponent, Sue Lovell, says she dug through his campaign finance reports and found some problems. She points to entries indicating Aiyer had personally taken $6,000 in campaign funds to repay himself for loans he'd made to his own campaign.

But nowhere did his reports indicate he'd actually loaned his campaign any money.

"It tells a lot about how you handle you own personal campaign finances," says Lovell. "You know, if you don't handle these finances honestly, what are you gonna do with the taxpayers' dollars?"

"It was, it was done in error," says Aiyer, "and so, but, we caught the error before it was ever filed."

Aiyer claims a campaign worker misunderstood a couple of routine bank transfers and that these are erroneous drafts of his campaign finance report that he never intended to file.

"It was supposed to have been removed, but for whatever reason, it wasn't at the time. It's the only thing I can conclude, because I don't know how it got there," says Aiyer.

The strange story of these campaign finance reports gets even stranger, when you look at what's in the public file.

Those records are kept at the Houston Community College System headquarters where Aiyer serves as a trustee.

Lovell says her campaign got the finance reports referring to those loans in a simple response to an open records request.

11 News looked through those public records Friday.

And if the document in question ever appeared in Aiyer's file, it's now gone.