It all started when Joseph Backholm of the Family Policy Institute called the state Public Disclosure Commission. Sponsors were getting ready to print petitions for I-1515, the proposed Student Privacy and Locker Room Safety Act, which would ban rules that let people use public restrooms based on anything but biology and genetics.
However one might feel about this issue, Backholm was trying to make sure everything was kosher on the petitions themselves. He asked PDC spokeswoman Lori Anderson if the sheets must carry the names of the campaign’s five largest donors under the 2012 update to disclosure laws.
It wasn’t a question she had been asked before, Anderson said later. The definition of political advertising in the law is pretty broad and could be interpreted to include the petitions, which are seen by hundreds of thousands of people. So she said yes, the petition sheet should include what’s generally referred to as the Top 5.
This sent shockwaves through the initiative industry like a rupture in the Cascadia Subduction Zone. While not as big as Boeing, Weyerhaeuser or the wheat growers, these folks can be just as noisy. A series of phone calls among the PDC, signature gatherers, initiative sponsors, and the secretary of state’s office ensued. It culminated Friday with a request for an attorney general’s opinion from Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn. It is an urgent matter requiring immediate attention, she wrote to Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
By the end of the request, Roach was in high dudgeon: “The people’s right to initiative and their right to sign petitions they support needs to be zealously protected from such bureaucratic interference.”
Except that the PDC had not made a policy change, and no one’s right to sign petitions was under attack. The agency hadn’t amended its rules or even revised the advice to campaigns on its website. Anderson merely offered an opinion when asked.
Legislature might weigh in
The PDC has no authority to stop a ballot campaign or invalidate petitions, she said in a recent interview, and has never sanctioned a campaign for not having the Top 5 on its sheets. The commission never sees the petitions.
The agency that collects and verifies them is the secretary of state’s elections division. That office only requires three things on a petition, spokesman Dave Ammons said: The ballot title, the text and the 20 lines for signatures.
The commission may decide to discuss the topic and try to determine the legislative intent for the definition of political advertising, Anderson said.
In the meantime, it would seem the initiative industry — the people who make money by sponsoring ballot measures or by collecting signatures — can stand down from DefCon 1. They could ramp up again if Ferguson says petitions are a form of campaign advertising and do need to list their Top 5 donors.
Even then, it wouldn’t be anything to worry about until next year, by which time Roach or another lawmaker could introduce a bill that says initiative petitions are not political ads, hold a hearing, and push it to the floor vote to give legislators a chance to say what they mean.