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Chris Mulick has worked for the Herald since 1998 and has served as the statehouse correspondent covering state government and politics since 2000. He works year-round out of the Herald's Olympia bureau on the state Capitol campus. Have a question? Send Chris an e-mail and he'll answer the best questions regularly. |
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Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, dissented in the Goodman decision arguing that legislators should be allowed to use press releases created at state expense while campaigning because they are public documents.
Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, has agreed to a Legislative Ethics Board determination that he illegally posted five legislative press releases generated by state staffers on his campaign website.
The board has issued a letter of instruction, the least of all penalties available to it.
Rep. Jamie Pedersen, a Seattle Democrat and member of the board, dissented.
It was a pretty simple case for the board, which has ruled on these matters before. The complaint was filed Aug. 11. That day Goodman’s campaign website contained the five press releases, which pertained to legislation he had sponsored and appointments he had gained.
They since have been taken down.
Pedersen’s dissent is noteworthy. He doesn’t see a problem with a legislator using a document created using state funds because it is a public record available to anyone.
“Once prepared, press releases drafted for legislators are public records under the Public Records Act and should be broadly available to the general public, even (or especially) in the context of campaigns,” Pedersen wrote. “There is no question that a member of the public who made a public records request for those press releases would be entitled to receive a copy of the releases and the state would expend resources in the form of staff time to make those available. Here a legislator’s campaign, at its expense and no additional expense to the state, proposes to make public records more broadly available to the voters to help them make an informed decision at the next election.”
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