Bill to require more transparency in ballot measure advertising moves forward

Ear­li­er today, along with NPI board mem­ber Steve Zemke and NPI con­trib­u­tor Steve Breaux, I par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pub­lic hear­ing in sup­port of House Bill 2499, prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Andy Bil­lig. HB 2499 would require adver­tis­ing for or against bal­lot mea­sures in Wash­ing­ton to include the name and address of the enti­ty pay­ing for the adver­tis­ing; enti­ties that are polit­i­cal com­mit­tees would also have to dis­close the names of their top five contributors.

The bill would­n’t stop big mon­eyed inter­ests from hijack­ing the ini­tia­tive process, but it would make astro­turf­ing more dif­fi­cult. If HB 2499 is enact­ed, it will be hard­er for the likes of BP and Bank of Amer­i­ca to hide behind fake names like “Cit­i­zens for Fis­cal Restraint” in their adver­tis­ing. And that would be a good thing.

Our old bud­dy Tim Eyman showed up at the hear­ing yes­ter­day to denounce HB 2499 and anoth­er bill spon­sored by Bil­lig which won’t be mov­ing for­ward (HB 2500). Eyman said noth­ing we haven’t heard before — he used up pret­ty much all of his time con­demn­ing the very pub­lic hear­ing he war par­tic­i­pat­ing in.

Hilar­i­ous­ly, only a few min­utes lat­er, after all of the tes­ti­mo­ny had been giv­en, the four Repub­li­cans on the com­mit­tee retreat­ed into an adja­cent con­fer­ence room for the pur­pos­es of cau­cus — with Tim Eyman as their invit­ed guest.

After they returned, exec­u­tive ses­sion resumed. House State Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee Vice Chair Sher­ry Apple­ton moved that HB 2499 be report­ed out of com­mit­tee with a “do pass” recommendation.

At least two of the Repub­li­cans took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­demn the bill, attempt­ing (and fail­ing) to refute some of the points that we had made in our tes­ti­mo­ny. How­ev­er, they offered no amendments.

The bill was sub­se­quent­ly report­ed out, with all sev­en Democ­rats (Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Hunt, Apple­ton, Darneille, Dun­shee, Hurst, McCoy, and Milos­cia) vot­ing in favor and all four Repub­li­cans (Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Tay­lor, Over­street, Alexan­der, and Con­dot­ta) vot­ing against. Pri­or to the vote, Repub­li­cans asked that the bill be sent through Ways & Means, despite it not hav­ing a fis­cal note. If this hap­pens, there will prob­a­bly be anoth­er hear­ing on the bill. Oth­er­wise it moves to House Rules.

Whether HB 2499 gets to the floor for dis­cus­sion and debate will be up to House Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship, includ­ing Speak­er Frank Chopp. But at least it sur­vived the first cut­off and remains alive for the time being.