WASHINGTON STATE

Washington State House Democrats

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

Rep. Bergquist: Open, honest government, because citizens deserve the truth

As a citizen and a voter, you deserve to know who’s really paying for campaign ads.

That’s why I wrote House Bill 2256, which would toughen up the requirements and close loopholes that let wealthy special interests dump money into campaign without citizens being the wiser.

Often, they’re using nonprofit organizations to funnel all this money.

This reform would do three major things:

  • Require nonprofit organizations to report political contributions and expenditures totaling over $25,000 to the state’s Public Disclosure Commission,
  • Make these organizations disclose the top 10 contributors exceeding $10,000 and any single contributor of at least $100,000, and
  • Make out-of-state groups play by the same rules as in-state groups.

These ideas had broad bipartisan support in the House and Senate earlier this session, passing both chambers easily in slightly different versions. For some reason, those minor differences didn’t get ironed out, so I introduced this new bill.

The legislation got a speedy hearing in the House and I hope the Senate will do the same after we pass it off the floor, because clean elections are crucial for our democracy to function.