November 06, 2025

Public Disclosure Commission refines proposal to Legislature on expenditure reporting dates

The Public Disclosure Commission hopes to present a bill to the Washington State Legislature for the 2026 legislative session aimed at standardizing requirements for campaign expenditure reporting to increase both compliance with the law and transparency for the public.  

Currently, candidates and political action committees file expenditure reports (C-4s) based on their participation in an upcoming election and the campaign’s level of activity/amount spent. The new proposal would abandon monetary thresholds and would require continuing committees to officially designate their participation status at the beginning of each year.  

Under the proposal, all candidates and PACs would file the C-4 by the 10th of each month, reporting on the previous month’s activity, regardless of the amount of that activity. From July to October, those campaigns would be required to file an additional C-4 on the 25th of each month.

All registered PACs would be required to submit a “statement of participation” each January if they are planning to participate in any election in that year.  

Campaigns would also have 48 hours from the closing of the reporting period to the filing of the report to prepare reports for the additional pre-election reports.  

PDC General Counsel Sean Flynn presented the proposal, and reported to the Commission that staff had begun outreach to legislators in the state House and Senate to make them aware of the proposal and find bill sponsors.  

PDC plans rulemaking in advance of recodification of disclosure law, extending temporary rules regarding ballot propositions on slate cards

Flynn also briefed the Commission on two rulemaking efforts.

In the first, the PDC will use the expedited rulemaking process to update references in the PDC’s rules, WAC 390, to reflect the upcoming recodification of campaign disclosure law, currently in RCW 42.17A, to RCW 29B. These changes would be permanent once approved.  

The state Legislature approved the recodification in 2024. The change in the code will be in effect on Jan. 1.  

Agency staff is currently working to update references to the code in its website, electronic filing systems and printed materials.  

PDC staff is also using the emergency rulemaking process to extend rules adopted earlier this year regarding ballot propositions on slate cards.  Emergency rules are active for 120 days but can be extended while the agency is working to propose a permanent rule change.

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 contributor for exempt funds, but are restricted to using those funds to promote voter registration, get-out-the-vote campaigns, sample ballots, slate cards and some other uses, but not for political advertising.  

A slate card is a list of candidates endorsed by the sponsor of the card. The new rules allow a slate card to also indicate the sponsor’s support or opposition to ballot propositions. If the card follows these rules, it is not classified as political advertising, and therefore does not count toward contribution limits to a candidate or committee.  

The rules, adopted this spring, allow political party committees to present their position on ballot propositions on slate cards while still allowing those cards to be funded from exempt accounts.  

The PDC plans to extend the rules while beginning the permanent rulemaking process.  

Enforcement update: Caseload ticks up prior to election, AI-assisted complaints challenge staff, outstanding fines in collections may be reported to credit bureaus

Between Sept. 17 and Oct. 15, the PDC received 99 new complaints. By Oct. 23, it had received nearly 50 more – representing an expected increase in complaint volume in the weeks before the general election.  

PDC staff are also seeing complaints that appear to be generated using AI. These have been challenging for staff due to their length – with some containing as many as 30 pages of information – requiring staff to spend more time evaluating the allegations, as well as other issues outside the PDC’s jurisdiction and misinterpretations of the law.  

As of Oct. 15, the PDC had 228 active cases, including 125 under initial review, 97 under formal investigation, four resolved through statements of understanding, one scheduled for a brief enforcement hearing and one pending deferred enforcement.  

On Sept. 23, the PDC conducted an enforcement process for about 50 candidates who had missed or filed late either the mandatory 21-day or 7-day pre-primary election expenditure report.  

Between Sept. 17 and Oct. 15, the PDC closed 35 cases, including two dismissed for lack of evidence, 11 reminders, one dismissed by the Executive Director Peter Frey Lavallee, 18 warnings, one statement of understanding, one technical correction and one violation found by the Commission.  

The closed cases involved 21 local candidates, one commercial advertiser, one public agency or public employee, 11 political committees and one grassroots lobbying campaign.  

Staff highlighted one case, number 174537, filed against the Governor’s Office. The complaint, filed in June 2025, alleged that the Governor’s Office violated RCW 42.17A.555, prohibiting use of public facilities to promote a ballot measure. However, staff found that the issue promoted in a post to the Governor’s official social media, was more accurately investigated under RCW 42.17A.635, governing public funding for lobbying activities.  

PDC staff issued a warning to the Governor’s Office, finding that the social media post qualified under RCW 42.52.180(2)(e), which permits “(d)e minimis use of public facilities by statewide elected officials and legislators incidental to the preparation or delivery of permissible communications, including written and verbal communications initiated by them of their views on ballot propositions that foreseeably may affect a matter that falls within their constitutional or statutory responsibilities...”

PDC Deputy Director Kim Bradford also noted that staff had directed the PDC’s contracted collections agency to send reports on about 40 enforcement cases with past-due fines to credit bureaus. The agency has worked in the past year to improve its collection rate of penalties imposed by the Commission.