Like Dennis Kampe's illegal use of the Skills Center to support his campaign, it appears that state liquor stores may be engaged in the same illegal activity.
RCW 42.17.130 - Use of public office or agency facilities in campaigns prohibits using public facilities to support campaigns.
“No elective official nor any employee of his [or her] office nor any person appointed to or employed by any public office or agency may use or authorize the use of any of the facilities of a public office or agency, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of assisting a campaign for election of any person to any office or for the promotion of or opposition to any ballot proposition. Facilities of a public office or agency include, but are not limited to, use of stationery, postage, machines, and equipment, use of employees of the office or agency during working hours, vehicles, office space, publications of the office or agency, and clientele lists of persons served by the office or agency."
Seems pretty straight forward to me. Let's see what the so-far worthless PDC has to say about it.
3 comments:
Didn't a worker from state unemployment just get in trouble over advocating for Patty Murray through the unemployment office?
Liquor stores are owned by the state, liquor is sold, warehoused and distributed by the state, so it stands to reason that since employees of the liquor stores are members of public unions, they too are state offices.
Seems to me, if they, the state employees within the state owned liquor stores, wish to campaign for or against such a measure inside their places of employment, they first must pass it so they will no longer be state employees.
Having filed ethics complaints this year against both Vancouver (on which you had a scoop last week) and the Liquor Board, here's what I've learned about this:
1) RCW 42.17.130 and PDC jurisdiction only applies to all public employees EXCEPT state employees. (e.g. cities, counties, school and water districts, etc.)
2) The similar statute which applies to state employees is RCW 42.52.180. Violations of this law are handled by the Executive Ethics Board, not the PDC.
3) Where was this photo taken? If it was a state-run store, then yes, it looks like a clear violation of RCW 42.52.180. However, if it was a contract liquor, then it's a private business and I doubt it would be considered a violation.
I think it's unseemly for a business that has a monopoly to operate in a given territory on behalf of the state to use his location as a campaign asset -- especially to campaign to keep his monopoly. Maybe this should be a violation of some kind, but I don't think that it is under current law.
If it is a contract store, I think there would only be a campaign violation if the owner is using more than a de minimus amount of his business resources on behalf of the campaign (i.e. substantially more than a sign in the window) without reporting that as an in-kind contribution to the campaign
Stefan,
The picture is in the window of the Salmon Creek Liquor Store and it was taken Saturday.
I'll be checking on the rest in the afternoon (Monday)
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