A Democratic activist filed a complaint Tuesday accusing House Speaker Tom Craddick of violating a state law prohibiting the payment of dependent children with campaign donations.

The twist is that Craddick's daughter, Christi, is a lawyer in her 30s — well beyond the minor child that the law targeted — who has been paid a six-figure sum by her father from his campaign donations.

However, John Cobarruvias, the Houston lawyer who filed the complaint, said the

speaker violated the law because he supplied a substantial part, if not all, of Christi Craddick's annual income by paying her $625,000 from his campaign donations over the past six years.

Plus, Cobarruvias said Craddick has his daughter on state-paid insurance because of a 1997 law that allows parents to keep a "dependent child" on taxpayer-paid health insurance "until they marry — regardless of age."

Most adult children are dropped from state health insurance during their 20s or when they are married and become independent. Christi Craddick is not married.

"He needs to give up one or the other," Cobarruvias said Tuesday of Craddick paying his daughter with supporters' donations and the state-paid health insurance.

Neither Christi Craddick's salary nor her status on state insurance has gone unreported. But the complaint by Cobarruvias, filed with the Texas Ethics Commission, tries to draw the embattled speaker into a question of whether he's flouted the law.

Alexis DeLee , the speaker's communications director, said, "The complaint is groundless as it is based on assertions that are incorrect."

Cobarruvias has had some success targeting other Republican lawmakers who paid family with campaign dollars.

Last month, the Texas Ethics Commission ordered two lawmakers, Reps. Carl Isett of Lubbock and Rob Eissler of The Woodlands, to repay money they paid their wives to do political work for them. The lawmakers were fined after Cobarruvias filed complaints.

The law forbids lawmakers to pay spouses or dependent children with campaign dollars. It was passed in the 1990s to prevent state lawmakers from living off lobbyists and their campaign donations.

There also is a question of what role, if any, Craddick played in changing a law in 1997 that allowed his daughter, then 26 and a lobbyist, to continue on state health insurance.

In 2002, Sheila Beckett, executive director of the Employees Retirement System of Texas, put the change in the law at the feet of Craddick.

"He initiated it," she told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "I was assuming he was concerned about the continuing insurance coverage for his daughter."

Craddick, through his spokesmen, denied ordering the change in the law.

The author of the change also denied talking to Craddick about it.

A total of 88 people, including Craddick's daughter, received the extended coverage in 2002.