It’s been a year since the filing of allegations that a political committee led by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood violated campaign finance laws last year in the course of gathering signatures for six initiatives, including three on the ballot in November.
In the ensuing months, staff of the Public Disclosure Commission conducted interviews, gathered documents and held initial hearings but reached no conclusions on whether wrongdoing occurred.
An alliance of progressive groups opposed to the ballot measures say that’s long enough and want the commission to hand the complaint over to Washington’s attorney general. Commissioners will consider the request Thursday.
Lawyers representing SEIU 775, Washington Conservation Action, Planned Parenthood and Civic Ventures argue in a July 17 letter that the move is needed because the alleged violations by Let’s Go Washington “have a significant ongoing impact on the public.”
The attorneys contend commission staff has been “effectively stymied” in its investigative efforts because they are dealing with the filing of “hundreds of low-level complaints” of campaign finance misdeeds by Conner Edwards and Glen Morgan, both of whom have ties to the committee. Morgan founded the group We the Governed, which touts on its website that it has filed 830 complaints filed with the Public Disclosure Commission or state Ethics Board.
With the “rapidly approaching” election, referral to the attorney general is necessary to ensure that the investigation “is given the urgency and attention that it deserves,” wrote attorneys Dmitri Iglitzin and Abby Lawlor.
Heywood said he’ll fight the move.
“We will be defending ourselves,” he said Tuesday. “Our argument is that the PDC staff should come to a conclusion. We’ve disclosed everything they’ve asked of us. We expect them to act in a fair way.”
Opponents, he said, are looking to “weaponize” the commission “to persecute their political enemies. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
How it began
Last year, Heywood bankrolled Let’s Go Washington’s successful signature-gathering drives for six initiatives to the Legislature. Lawmakers adopted three – dealing with guidelines for police pursuits, parental rights and taxes.
Voters will decide the fate of three others that seek to repeal the capital gains tax and the cap-and-trade system, and make the state’s new longterm care services program voluntary. The four progressive groups behind the complaint are helping fund the campaign to defeat these measures.
On July 19, the Public Disclosure Commission received a complaint alleging Lets Go Washington repeatedly failed to disclose details about the flow of money in and out of the committee coffers for each of the six initiatives
They allege that by using Heywood’s “deep pockets” as its near exclusive source of cash, the committee circumvented the need for filing of regular reports of contributions. They also argue he failed to report pledges intended to cover in-kind expenditures.
Three months later, the quartet of organizations collectively filed a related complaint making new allegations about the lack of disclosures by Heywood in what the groups’ lawyer deemed “the costliest effort by an individual to rewrite Washington law.”
Those allegations are not the issue in front of the Public Disclosure Commission on Thursday. Commissioners will only be considering if the investigation should remain in their hands, or not.
Blame game
State law lays out a process for the commission to refer cases to the attorney general. They can do so if they conclude it is necessary to ensure compliance with state campaign finance laws, that an apparent violation warrants a greater penalty they can legally impose or if the maximum penalty is not sufficient to address the severity of an apparent violation.
Attorneys for the progressive groups argue the severity of the allegations merit referral. They also blame Edwards, a former treasurer of Let’s Go Washington, and Morgan, who supported the signature-gathering effort with campaign videos, for impeding the investigation with their serial filings that require the attention of Public Disclosure Commission staff.
Edwards said that the insinuation that he files many complaints “to prevent the agency from investigating and resolving” the case is inaccurate.
“The goal of my complaint crusade was essentially to force the agency to adopt the technology-assisted proactive enforcement methods that have been successfully utilized in other states,” he wrote in an email.
“The complainant’s insinuation doesn’t really make any sense to me,” he wrote. Clogging up the system with complaints would make it more likely that the commission would refer a case to the attorney general, he said.
Morgan said there are unresolved complaints he filed that pre-date those levied against Heywood’s committee.
“They want special treatment. They just want to cut in line,” Morgan said.
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