Emilie Boyles’ appeals hearing this morning stretched from 9am to almost 12:30. Only three and a half hours, you say? Obviously, you weren’t there.

As Amy relayed, it was a subdued affair. The gray-upon-gray hearing room—in the state worker’s comp hearing center by the convention center—was filled to capacity with about 25 people, composed entirely of media, three representatives from the Citizens Campaign Commission, members of the auditor’s office, and a witness for Boyles.

At the front of the room were Boyles and deputy city attorney Linly Rees, with Administrative Law Judge David Gerstenfeld presiding. The underlying issue: whether the administrative rules—which Boyles received when she filed and agreed to adhere to—were too complicated for someone like Boyles to understand and follow.

Gerstenfeld will reportedly issue his order within the next three business days, perhaps putting an end to one of the strangest sagas in Portland elections history.

More about the hearing after the jump.

While Boyles' campaign is still under investigation by the Attorney General's office over allegations of fraud in the signature gathering process, this morning's hearing only focused on the city auditor's accusations that Boyles violated the Voter Owned Elections city code in the way she actually spent her public money.

The auditor has demanded back all of the $145,000 the city gave Boyles' campaign, plus interest, plus penalties for each of the five violations she's accused of.

Violation 1. Boyles is accused of violating city code by using public funds to lease a campaign office for an entire year, despite the fact that she was only a candidate for the primary election, which ends 20 days after the May 16 election day. She paid $11,400--in full, upfront--for a full year at a former restaurant on SE Powell. The VOE administrative rules only allow money to be used during the election.

Further, on the lease she signed, Boyles says the space was to be used after the election for a food bank program. Under state law, candidates can donate leftover campaign resources to nonprofit organizations--however, under the city's VOE rules, this is forbidden. Since the money comes from the city, and by extension, from taxpayers, any leftover cash has to go back to the public fund.

Boyles, however, claims that this violation discriminates against people with disabilities and people living in poverty. This argument is a little complicated and requires some setup, so bear with me.

Ok, Boyles has epilepsy, right? That means that whatever space she found for her campaign office needed to not have flourescent lights (cause siezures--oh no--the hearing room has flourescent lights!) and needed a space where she could lay down if she had an episode. Plus, it needed to be wheelchair accessible for her volunteers. Plus plus, since many of her "core volunteers" suffer from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, they weren't comfortable leaving the SE neighborhood where they and Boyles live, so the office had to be nearby.

These physical and geographic limitations narrowed the locations she could choose from for a campaign office, Boyles said. The biggest limitation, though, was financial. Because of medical expenses stemming from her epilepsy, Boyles says she lives in poverty and has a horrific credit rating--so horrific, in fact, that no property managers in her neighborhood would lease her space for an office.

So, finally, Boyles says, they walked into an empty space that used to be a restaurant and offered a year's payment upfront. It was the only way, she said, that anyone would have rented her the space.

That's her explanation.

Unfortunately for her, the city sees it differently. According to Rees and city auditor Gary Blackmer, the landlord of the space never asked for or required a year's rent up front. In fact, Boyles never asked if she could pay month to month and never asked for a shorter lease (one that would have ended just after the election, keeping her in compliance). Rees emphatically denied that Boyles was being penalized for her disability--one that she never made the city aware of, and never requested accomodations for--but was being penalized solely for paying for a space well beyond the primary and general elections, and was intended to be used the majority of the time for a food bank on the city's 11 grand (or "big," as the kids say).

Violations 2 & 3. These both deal with allegations that Boyles paid her 16-year-old daughter and her Russian campaign consultant, Vladimir Golovan (who's being investigated by the state for possible fraud in signature gathering), above fair market value for their work.

Primarily, the central argument was whether young Kimberly Boyles actually earned $12,500 by doing "internet marketing." Her mother says the internet marketing process is "propietary" and a "trade secret." Therefore, she can't actually reveal what her daughter was doing, but said the "process" was handed down from her grandmother to her father to her to her daughter, with obvious changes as technology advanced.

Confused? So is everyone else. Which is why nobody buys the "internet marketing" thing. Here's what it sounds like, though. Kimberly Boyles spent hours and hours online, trolling blogs, chat rooms, and listservs, and then fed the campaign all the new "buzz words" the bloggers were using.

Rees said the only product of Kimberly Boyles work was a letter she spammed out to a ton of local listservs pleading for attorneys to come to her mother's aid. And that letter, she said, "Sounds like the product of someone with her level of high school experience."

Boyles responded by saying, "The fact that she sent out a letter that sounds like it came from a 16-year-old shows her marketing skills. It was meant to sound like a plea from a 16-year-old" in order to get sympathy.

Violation 4. Boyles had a phone line (and DSL) installed in her mobile home using city funds. This is actually appears to be a violation of state law--campaign phones can't be put into residences. Boyles even admitted that phone was used at least occasionally for non-campaign purposes.

Violation 5. That Boyles used the public funds to pay back debts to consultants (Golovan, Kimberly Boyles, and campaign manager Aaron Minoo)--debts that were acquired before she was certified to receive funding. The VOE rules state that the only money candidates can spend prior to being certified is "seed money" or the $5 contributions. The city includes "incurring debt" as an expenditure. Essentially, Boyles signed contracts with these three people, stating that they'd get their money as soon as the campaign was certified and the $145,000 rolled in. Since that money was "owed" or "indebted" to them for services provided before the certification, the city argues that the contracts and payment violated the rules.

Boyles, though, says she used the definition of the word "expenditure" found in the dictionary, which doesn't refer to debts incurred.

Ultimately, Boyles tried to paint the VOE system as overly-complicated and impossible to navigate for "common" people.

"We did the best we could in the spirit of the law," she said during her closing arguments. "We did our best to comply with a very complex set of regulations."