March 31, 2025
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PDC celebrates transparency during Sunshine Week
On March 18 and 19, PDC staff set up a booth at the state Legislative Building for Sunshine Week, to promote transparency and discuss the millions of public records available online at pdc.wa.gov.
Sunshine Week is a national celebration of transparency in government recognized by nonprofits, good government groups, journalists and agencies like the PDC.
Staff reported on the outreach project at the Public Disclosure Commission’s March regular meeting. Over the two days, 10 staff members rotated through the booth, and met with about 45 lobbyists, legislators, and other visitors to the capitol.
More public comment needed on proposal to adjust expenditure reporting schedule
On March 11, PDC Chair J. Leach hosted an engagement session to get feedback on proposals to standardize and simplify the campaign expenditure reporting calendar, with the intention of helping campaigns keep track of deadlines and improving transparency.
Campaign expenditure reports, known as C-4 reports, have due dates that depend on the amount of a candidate’s or committee’s financial activity and their election participation. For that reason, a committee participating in the November 2025 general election has different C-4 due dates than a committee participating in the April 2025 special election.
The Commission proposed common due dates for all committees and candidates, regardless of election participation; twice-monthly reporting of expenditures for all campaigns, and possible additional reporting deadlines in the days before an election. More than 35 people signed up to attend the meeting, but only about a half a dozen, all treasurers, gave comments on the options.
The Commission asked staff to develop another proposed reporting schedule that could be discussed at the April 24 meeting.
Staff, Commission plan group enforcement process for mandatory pre-primary election expenditure reports
During the 2024 election year, the PDC created a pilot project to send reminders on mandatory pre-primary and pre-general election expenditure reports (C-4) to candidates, as part of the Commission’s strategic planning process.
This year, the agency is looking to expand that project to include a staff-generated enforcement process for candidates who still fail to file despite those additional reminders.
Deputy Director Kim Bradford presented the Commission with two options for primary-election report enforcement during their March regular meeting. The first would take place just before the primary election, taking into account only missing 21-day pre-primary reports. The second would take place after the primary, in late August and September, and take into account missing 21-day and 7-day pre-primary reports.
The commissioners were in favor of the second option, with a process that prioritized cases against candidates who advance to the general election.
Enforcement update
Between February 19 and March 20, the PDC received 18 new complaints and held four initial hearings. As of March 20, the agency had 221 open compliance cases, including 66 under initial review, 131 that have had an initial hearing, 23 scheduled for a brief enforcement hearing and one scheduled for a full commission hearing.
In the past month, 104 cases have been resolved, including five closed with no evidence of a violation, three reminders, 18 dismissals by the executive director, five remediable issues, 33 closed with a written warning, 18 statements of understanding and 22 violations found in brief hearings.
Of those closures, three involved statewide candidates, three judicial and 43 local races. In addition, there were five cases resolved for advertising complaints, one for grassroots lobbying, three involving public agencies and 40 involving political committees.