Anti-Sound Transit Group Has Not Filed With PDC
posted by on August 20 at 17:38 PM
No to Proposition 1, the group that’s opposed to this year’s light rail expansion measure, has not yet filed as a political campaign with the Public Disclosure Commission despite the fact that they’ve begun campaigning against this year’s ballot measure.
Mark Baerwaldt, spokesman for the No to Prop. 1 campaign, says the campaign hasn’t filed any public-disclosure forms yet because it doesn’t have to. “The minute there’s a penny raised, the minute there’s a penny spent, it’ll be reported,” Baerwaldt says. “Are we going to be out there in full force with a massive campaign? Absolutely. … [But] we are still in the process of planning” what that campaign will look like.
Lori Anderson, a spokeswoman for the PDC, says whether the campaign has spent money isn’t the issue; the law says that what matters is whether they intend to do so. “They don’t have to actually do it; they just have to have the expectation,” Anderson says.
“They’ve been told that they need to file.”
Although Baerwaldt responds the campaign has no expectation yet of raising or spending money, Anderson says their web site suggests otherwise. The site—originally put up in opposition to last year’s Prop. 1, the roads and transit ballot measure that was defeated in November—refers repeatedly to the 2008 ballot measure, includes the text of a radio ad clearly aimed at this year’s measure, not last year’s, and includes news stories from as recently as late July 2008—eight months after the 2007 ballot measure was defeated. The site also includes a form, left over from last year but still apparently active, for visitors to contribute to the campaign. “That says to me that they have the expectation of receiving contributions or making expenditures,” Anderson says.
Nonetheless, Baerwaldt insists that “everything we’re doing is completely in compliance with the law.” He says that the campaign has been in contact with the PDC about filing as a political committee, which they plan to do in the next couple of weeks.
“Here we go again with all the piddly little nonsense,” says Baerwaldt, who calls Sound Transit a “rogue agency.”
“This is trivia. It’s not really important,” he adds.
The PDC, naturally, does not agree.
The Stranger
