Washington’s campaign finance law enforcement agency has handed a $20,000 fine to the conservative organization behind the slate of initiatives appearing on the ballot this November.
The Public Disclosure Commission found Let’s Go Washington failed to report expenditures of subcontractors used by the firms it paid for in last year’s signature-gathering process that successfully moved the initiatives forward.
In a decision issued Wednesday, the watchdog agency also found the conservative political committee violated state law by not providing its accounting books to the commission in a timely manner.
The decision is the conclusion of a more than yearlong investigation into Let’s Go Washington’s campaign finances that launched in July 2023 after complaints were filed by a coalition of progressive advocacy groups organized under the banner Defend Washington.
Charges were brought forward in September, and the commission held a final hearing on the matter last week.
Let’s Go Washington, founded by conservative multimillionaire hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, successfully gathered enough signatures to advance six initiatives to the Legislature earlier this year, when lawmakers opted to adopt half of them.
The remaining initiatives will be put to the voters in the general election Nov. 5 and seek to end the state’s cap-and-trade program intended to combat climate change, repeal the capital gains tax and make the state’s long-term care program and related tax optional.
The complaints, and the subsequent investigation and decision, focused on the signature-gathering effort for those six initiatives and related expenditures.
The commission found Defend Washington’s allegation of improper record keeping was substantiated, as Let’s Go Washington failed to do its due diligence to find out and publicly report whether funding provided to contractors for the signature gathering effort was then passed on to subcontractors assisting with the task.
To highlight the committee’s shortcomings, the Public Disclosure Commission cited an agreement with one of the committee’s top contractors, Allstate Petition Management, which did not include any language about tracking amounts paid to subcontractors.
Let’s Go Washington has paid APM more than $1.8 million to date, a portion of the nearly $10 million doled out to four signature gathering firms in 2023 and 2024, according to commission records.
Let’s Go Washington later asked for information on payments to subcontractors but was stonewalled by the firm’s owner and operator Roy Ruffino, who said that was “proprietary.” The commission did not believe that was grounds for dismissing the charge.
“Failing to ask or failing to follow up on a contractor’s non-response or refusal to provide the information is insufficient,” The decision reads. “If this were the standard, any committee could simply ignore the issue and argue it has no knowledge of its contractor’s actions and nothing to report.”
During the investigation, the commission found Let’s Go Washington’s reported spending and contributions for their signature gathering effort as one ordeal, rather than providing reports for each individual initiative.
The committee later amended its reports, and the PDC asked in May for the accounting books to double check expenditures were reported correctly “and properly allocated to each initiative,” according to commission records. The PDC requires accounting books to “be available for audit or examination by the PDC at any time upon request” for up to five years, as it’s written in state law.
But Let’s Go Washington did not provide the books until it was forced to by a court subpoena, after the agency sent two formal requests in May and July.
Commission records state the committee responded to those requests by saying it was already amidst a campaign for a separate initiative, one aimed at enshrining natural gas usage in the state, and that complying with the request would be a “great burden.”
When the commission finally received the books in August, they did not find fault with the record keeping aside from the lack of subcontractor reporting.
“While the Books of Account were incomplete and not produced timely, they were not deleted or destroyed and remain available as required,” the decision reads.
Let’s Go Washington will only have to pay half of the fine amount if it does so within 30 days of the decision, remains in compliance with the PDC for the next four years and corrects the missing information regarding subcontractors.
In a written statement following the decision, Heywood touted the commission’s findings his committee compiled with some portions of campaign finance law – and pointed the finger at Let’s Go Washington’s detractors.
He alleges that if his committee is in violation for not reporting subcontractor expenditures, so are the progressive committees in opposition to the initiatives.
“If investigation of subvendors are of paramount importance, the same investigative standard should be applied to all organizations involved in the 2024 election,” Heywood said.
Heywood said Let’s Go Washington has filed six complaints with the commission alleging much of what his organization was found in violation of.
Two of the complaints take aim at Defend Washington and the No on Initiative 2109 group regarding their activities this campaign season, while the remaining center around the activities of progressive groups in campaigns dating back to 2019.
