By MIKE MANSUR and DAVE HELLING 

   More than two months before Mark Funkhouser won Kansas City’s mayoral race, those involved in the former city auditor’s blossoming campaign knew they had a problem.

  The accountant who had agreed to track contributions and spending for the campaign couldn’t be found. The deadline for filing campaign-finance reports with the Missouri Ethics Commission was only hours away.

   So members of the largely volunteer campaign plunged into the books, filing a report that night, just 90 minutes before the midnight deadline.

   But the report to state campaign regulators was inaccurate, as were those that followed. They miscounted revenue, double-counted some contributions, erred in totaling spending, and misattributed loans and loan payments.

   Those mistakes, many involved in the campaign now acknowledge, only compounded in the weeks leading up to the election. The result: an apparent $80,000 discrepancy in campaign-finance reports that left some wondering whether money had been misspent.

   Last month, The Kansas City Star revealed that Funkhouser’s campaign reports contained an $80,000 discrepancy. Its January 2008 report showed just $14,912 in the bank as of Sept. 30. But the earlier October 2007 report had stated $94,840.78 as of Sept. 30.

   The Funkhouser for Kansas City Committee began filing amended campaign reports over the last 10 days. So far, it has filed five amended reports and is expected to file two more.

   These new reports show that the original campaign reports contained many errors and discrepancies. For example, the 56-page report filed March 19, eight days before the election, listed more than $101,000 in itemized expenditures. But the report’s summary page totaled expenditures for the period at $49,316. n amended report listed expenditures for that same period at $123,922.

   Overall, the amended reports account for more than $82,000 in expenditures not previously disclosed — which essentially corrects the discrepancy reported earlier by The Star.

   The newspaper has yet to review the documentation behind all of the newly listed expenditures. But the campaign has agreed to make all receipts and other documents supporting the expenditures available for review.

   "We really were trying to get elected, so we really did spend all the money on the election,” Funkhouser said in an interview about the campaign’s bookkeeping problems.

  Gloria Squitiro, the mayor’s wife and current campaign treasurer, also took part in the interview. Squitiro was named treasurer after former councilman Evert Asjes stepped down from the post in November.

   Funkhouser attributed the errors to his lack of political experience and the demands of his campaign.

"We were pretty ragtag the whole way,” Funkhouser said. “We were on top of the decisions to spend. But I didn’t do the accounting. I wasn’t keeping the books. I was running for mayor.”

   Funkhouser, however, said that he took responsibility for any bookkeeping errors and that he and his wife are working hard to file amended reports with the correct information. A local accountant has been working to complete the task. He has yet to file amendments for the campaign’s two most recent reports.

   Meanwhile, Asjes said he wouldn’t be surprised if state officials investigate the campaign because it was long delayed in filing the amended reports.

   "In retrospect, I should’ve been harder on ‘where’s the money, where’s the money, where’s the money?’ ” he said. “I should have been more diligent, but I just assumed … everything was in order.”