State Sen. Pam Roach has asked the Washington state Attorney General’s Office for an opinion. Her request comes after a Public Disclosure Commission staffer advised an initiative campaign to disclose its top donors on petitions.
OLYMPIA — State Sen. Pam Roach, R-Sumner, has asked the state Attorney General’s Office to give an informal opinion on whether initiative campaigns must disclose their top five donors on signature-gathering petitions.
Roach’s request comes after a staffer at the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) advised an initiative campaign to disclose its top donors on petitions.
Since 2012, state law has required political committees to include their five top contributors on political ads about ballot measures that cost $1,000 or more.
Lori Anderson, spokeswoman for the PDC, said she interpreted the law as including petitions and said so to Joseph Backholm.
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Backholm has been submitting initiative proposals to restrict bathroom access for transgender people and is involved in the Just Want Privacy campaign.
“That was me giving advice as a staff member answering a question,” said Anderson, who cited the state laws defining political advertising.
Anderson said she didn’t know if campaigns had been previously disclosing their donors on petitions. The PDC — which also enforces campaign-disclosure laws — hasn’t received a complaint about not disclosing donors on petitions.
In a letter to the Attorney General’s Office, Roach called the interpretation of the law “bizarre” and said that the PDC never consulted the Legislature.
Roach added that, “I believe that initiative petitions are not advertisements and therefore not subject to the five-donor requirement.”
The laws Anderson cited weren’t intended to apply to ballot petitions, Roach said in an interview.
“If they [the PDC] had wanted to do this, they should have brought this to the Legislature,” she added.
Since the question is coming up during an election cycle, the Secretary of State’s Office will accept all valid petition signatures regardless of whether they have the donor information, according to spokesman David Ammons.
Ammons said, however, that the PDC advice “caught us by surprise.”
From Costco Wholesale pushing for privatized liquor sales, to a proposal to allow GMO labeling, initiative campaigns in Washington attract millions of dollars in funding.