July 01, 2025
Commission approves rule change to allow parties to promote, oppose votes on ballot measures alongside preferred candidates on sample ballots
As part of an emergency rulemaking process, the Public Disclosure Commission approved rules at its June 26 regular meeting to change language in WAC 390 to allow political parties to show their positions on ballot measures on sample ballots.
The emergency rulemaking process allows the changes to be implemented in time for the 2025 election cycle. The new rules will be in effect for 120 days, which can be extended if the PDC pursues a permanent rule change.
The Washington State Democratic Party submitted a petition in March asking the Commission to consider the change that would allow parties to indicate their preference on ballot measures on sample ballots that remain exempt from contribution limits. The state Republican Party also expressed support for the request.
Bona fide state party committees are allowed to have two kinds of accounts: Exempt and non-exempt. These committees can accept unlimited contributions from any donor for their exempt accounts, but are restricted to using those funds to promote voter registration, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and other uses such as sample ballots, which do not count as a contribution to any individual candidate.
Sample ballots are an exception to the rule that prohibits parties from using exempt funds to support individual candidates or ballot measures. Sample ballots (including slate cards) can communicate the party’s preferred candidates, as long as they don’t include advocacy statements or promote individual candidates, or candidates’ positions on issues or platforms. Because they are exempt from contribution limits, sample ballots do not need to be reported or attributed as contributions to any individual campaign.
Under previous PDC rules, sample ballots that included a party’s position on any ballot proposition were not exempt from contribution limits and could not be paid for using exempt funds.
Public Disclosure Commission issues guidance on personal safety and security measures
Also at its June 26 regular meeting, the Commission released guidance advising that active campaign and surplus campaign funds may be used to pay for personal safety and security measures in some limited instances.
The Commission has previously released an interpretation of the law stating that expenses for safety measures related to a person’s public service may be allowed from surplus funds, or money left over in a campaign account after the campaign is concluded, if the risk is identifiable and the expense is proportional to that risk.
However, the guidelines for the use of active campaign funds for such expenses were less explicit, agency staff reported at the Commission’s June 26 regular meeting.
“We’ve done our best to craft some guidance and welcome your input and feedback on that. … There are always going to be edge cases and we’ll get inquiries,” said PDC Executive Director Peter Frey Lavallee. “It’s a good faith effort to try to provide some greater understanding of what we think the current rules require and allow.”
Guidance released from the PDC is a less formal way of explaining existing public disclosure law than through an official Commission interpretation, or the formal rulemaking process.
Personal use of security measures paid for with surplus or active campaign funds is not allowed. If there is personal use, or if there is use after an official’s term or campaign has ended, the cost would need to be prorated, or reimbursed, respectively.
PDC imposes $20,000 fine for late reporting of more than $1M by ballot measure PAC
The Washington Public Disclosure Commission today approved a $20,000 penalty to settle a case against a political action committee that admitted late reporting of more than $1 million in expenditures in the 2024 election cycle.
Green Jobs PAC reached a settlement with PDC staff in which the committee admitted to violating state disclosure law and agreed to pay a penalty.
The PAC opposed statewide Initiative 2117. The expenditures in question accounted for more than 36 percent of its total spending.
The Public Disclosure Commission voted unanimously to approve the settlement during its June 26 regular meeting. The Commission suspended $10,000 of the penalty, provided the committee pays the fine within 30 days of the order and remains in compliance with PDC reporting requirements for the next four years.
Commissioner Douglass North expressed concern that PDC penalties are not high enough to dissuade large, well-funded campaigns from late reporting.
“This becomes a cost of doing business for large campaigns to do this,” he said.
The PDC has a public hearing scheduled for its July 24 regular meeting to discuss proposed changes to rules related to the agency’s penalty guidelines.
Commission Chair J. Leach noted during the meeting that this penalty is consistent with other recent cases involving similar allegations and sums of money.
PDC staff found no evidence that the violations were intentional. Attorney Dmitri Iglitzin, representing Green Jobs PAC, told the PDC on June 26 that the PAC admitted to the reporting errors, but that they were a “administrative screwup … which it deeply regrets,” rather than an intentional act.
The stipulation outlines three violations of public disclosure law.
First, that more than $1 million should have been included in a report due seven days before the 2024 election, but were not reported until November 13, 2024, 15 days late. The PDC investigation concluded that this deprived the public of timely and accurate information in the days before ballots were counted.
Green Jobs PAC also admitted to failing to properly disclose subvendor information on its 21-day and 7-day pre-general election expenditure reports. The reports were amended after the election to include that information, 62 and 48 days late, respectively.
Finally, the PAC admitted to failing to timely disclose the specific ballot measure opposed by each expenditure, as required by law, on expenditures in July, August, September, October and November 2024. The PAC’s registration statement included the information about its opposition to I-2117 but it was missing from initial expenditure reports. These reports were also amended after the 2024 general election.
Staff launch new training opportunities, more than double attendance in June classes
In June, staff hosted a series of “Lunch and Learns,” or 45-minute lunchtime training sessions designed to help campaigns, particularly first-timers and volunteer treasurers, understand their disclosure requirements during the 2025 election cycle.
The classes focused on contribution (C-3) and expenditure (C-4) reporting. Originally, staff scheduled one session on each topic, but added two more sessions due to high demand.
Overall, 139 filers attended these four sessions. For the month of June, 207 filers attended all PDC classes, compared to 73 in June 2023, the last local election year.
These lunchtime sessions are intended to complement the PDC’s more comprehensive trainings on disclosure law by giving candidates and campaign officials a chance to brush up on specific reporting or disclosure activities and to get answers to their questions in a more informal setting. More classes are scheduled in the future, on topics including sponsor identification and political ad reporting, prohibitions on using public facilities to promote campaigns, and tips for closing out your campaign after an election.
See more information, or sign up for a future training session here.
Enforcement update
Between May 15 and June 16, the PDC received 59 new complaints, and as of June 16, had 182 open cases.
During that same time period, 64 cases closed, including: Two closed for lack of evidence, 10 with reminders, one dismissed by the executive director, two technical corrections, 23 written warnings, 10 statements of understanding and 16 violations found by the commission.
Of those 64 closed cases, one involved statewide race, three were legislative races, one involved a commercial advertiser, one a public employer, one grassroots lobbying campaign, two lobbyists, four public agencies, 15 political committees and the remaining 36 were local candidates.
In one of these resolved cases, Commission Chair J. Leach found in a brief enforcement hearing that an official should have reported $13,000 in unpaid PDC penalties on his personal financial affairs statement. Debt of more than $2,400 other than credit card debt must be reported on the F-1.
In another case, staff investigated a complaint of a group failing to report grassroots lobbying, related to advertisements shown during the 2025 Superbowl. Staff dismissed the complaint, finding that the advertisements did not meet the definition of grassroots lobbying because it did not include a call to action. Staff issued a reminder to the group about rules related to grassroots lobbying.
In June, Chair Leach conducted two brief enforcement hearing for candidates who failed to file, or filed late, their campaign registrations (C-1) or personal financial affairs statements (F-1).
Staff issued 241 hearing notices for these alleged violations in 2025, compared to 173 in 2023, the last local election year. Local election years typically have more candidates, many of whom are less experienced in disclosure requirements. PDC staff also conduced this general enforcement process earlier than in past years.
Of the 241 cases filed, 152, or 59 percent, went to a brief enforcement hearing in June. The remaining cases were either settled with statements of understanding or closed by staff for other reasons.