The Citizens Clean Elections Commission is scheduled to decide whether to sanction and possibly remove District 10 Rep. Doug Quelland from office on May 15.

Quelland, who ran a publicly funded campaign in 2008, has been accused of failing to report a $15,000 political consulting contract on his 2008 campaign finance reports.

In late April, commission members balked at a request from Clean Elections Executive Director Todd Lang to find that Quelland had violated a series of campaign finance laws, including the most serious charge of overspending his campaign finances by more than 10 percent, which warrants removal of public officials who campaigned using public financing.

Lang will make the same recommendation on May 15, said Clean Elections Commission Voter Education Manager Michael Becker.

Quelland maintains he terminated the March 2007 contract with the consultant within days of its signing and that all payments he made to Davis’ firm Intermedia Public Relations were for advertising for Quelland’s businesses, not campaign services.

However, Davis has told the commission he carried out his contractual campaign obligations and received payment from Quelland in the form of checks and free rent at an office located in a north Phoenix strip mall owned by the lawmaker.

If the allegations are verified by the commission, Quelland could become the second Arizona lawmaker to be removed from office for violating campaign spending limits for publicly funded candidates.

In January 2006, the Arizona Supreme Court ordered District 7 Republican Representative David Burnell Smith from office. Smith was found by the commission to have exceeded his 2004 primary election spending limits by 17 percent.

The ruling brought an end to Smith’s appeal of the commission’s 2005 decision to remove him from office.