State Sen.-Elect Bryan King of Green Forest has paid a $150 fine to the Arkansas Ethics Commission to settle a complaint that he violated campaign finance regulations.

King was also issued a public letter of caution after the commission found that he failed to timely report a campaign loan and failed to timely file campaign finance reports for March and April.

“Basically what it was was a data entry thing,” King said Friday, Nov. 18. “And then I was late a couple times. One time I didn’t have internet out there at the house, and one time I was just late. That’s it.”

King said in hindsight, he should have hired an accountant to file his campaign finance reports.

“I should have paid somebody else to do it,” he said. “But I didn’t. And I wish I had.”

A letter issued to King by Graham Sloan, director of the ethics commission, identified Alison Smith as the complainant in King’s case. King said he doesn’t know Smith, but said he reported an error in his reports to the commission himself.

“After my runoff, I realized ‘I’m off on this,’ ” he said. “So I went back to the ethics commission and I self-reported that I was off and trying to correct it. So I’ve been talking to them and I have made a bunch of corrections and amendments. … I can assure you there’s nothing nefarious. I’m sure anybody’s going to say that but I can assure you, I’ll cost myself $10,000 before I look like I made a dollar out of it.”

King, a Republican, defeated Democrat Jim Wallace of Eureka Springs in the Nov. 8 general election to win the District 28 seat in the state Senate. King won a five-man race for the Republican nomination, defeating State Sen. Bob Ballinger of Ozark in a June runoff.