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Former Democratic Rep. Jesus Rubalcava was ordered today to repay more than $17,000 to the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

Secretary of State Michele Reagan is taking her dispute with the Citizens Clean Elections Commission to court, where she wants to intervene in a case challenging the commission’s disputed authority to regulate independent expenditures and traditionally funded candidates.

The Citizens Clean Elections Commission is considering pushing the fight against dark money into new territory, and that isn’t sitting well with Arizona’s top elections official.

Disagreements over the Citizens Clean Elections Commission’s authority over nonparticipating candidates and independent expenditure committees derailed a possible last-minute deal with House Republican leadership over the future of Arizona’s system of public funding for political campaigns.

A new member has joined the Citizens Clean Elections Commission after being appointed by former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer during her last week in office.

Attorney General Tom Horne paid a $10,000 fine to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, officially ending the agency’s investigation into allegations that he illegally had Attorney General’s Office employees working on his re-election during work hours.

The Citizens Clean Elections Commission voted to impose a $96,000 fine against the Legacy Foundation Action Fund over ads it ran criticizing then-Mesa Mayor Scott Smith after deciding that they should have been reported as campaign commercials for the governor’s race.

Republican Corporation Commission candidates Tom Forese and Doug Little now admit they broke Arizona’s campaign finance laws, and each has been assessed a $1,000 fine by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission, meaning the two will avoid a deeper investigation into their campaign finance reports.

The Citizens Clean Elections Commission voted unanimously to follow its executive director’s recommendation that it move forward with an investigation into a group that ran ads against former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith during his gubernatorial campaign.

The amount of campaign cash that’s been spent by third party groups that don’t have to disclose their donors and have no spending limits — so called “dark money” — has reached an all-time high in 2014.