State Rep. Brendan Williams, D-Olympia, is looking at the state law which the state Public Disclosure Commission will be looking at after the State Patrol forcibly handed off the whole "e-mail" case to the elections watchdog agency.

If you'll recall, the State Patrol announced yesterday it couldn't find a state law that was violated by the e-mail the was CC'ed to four legislators, an e-mail in which the Labor Council laid out its strategy for lobbying the Worker Privacy Bill.

I'm posting Williams' e-mail because he cites the same civil statute that PDC executive director Vicki Rippie mentioned yesterday when I asked her if the PDC had requested the material from the WSP. (It did not, she said, contrary to what the State Patrol said.)

As Williams notes, that statutes prohibits lobbyists from exercising "any undue influence, extortion, or unlawful retaliation upon any legislator by reason of such legislator's position with respect to, or his vote upon, any pending or proposed legislation."

You be the judge. I'm not gonna repeat the whole story here, especially when I can just provide a link to past coverage.

From: Williams, Rep. Brendan [mailto:Williams.Brendan@leg.wa.gov]
Sent: Tue 3/17/2009 6:04 PM
To: Turner, Joe - Tacoma
Subject: E-mail-gate

The only arguably relevant provision of state law I can find is chapter 42.17.230(2)(e), which prohibits lobbyists from exercising "any undue influence, extortion, or unlawful retaliation upon any legislator by reason of such legislator's position with respect to, or his vote upon, any pending or proposed legislation." I'm not aware of this ambiguous statement - surely the most violated, at least in spirit, provision of state law (read any edition of BIAW's Building Insight) - being tested in court.

[More:]

I can scarcely imagine that a statement of internal strategy in which the idea is shared of withholding contributions from those who have (a) already publicly promised to support a law, (b) in the event they break that public promise, is (c) inducing people to act differently from how they have already publicly promised to act. That is unless it were to be asserted that Democrats are entitled, perhaps as a matter of birthright, to labor contributions.

Beyond the question of whether any e-mail beginning with the salutation "Brothers and Sisters" could be deemed threatening, generally the question with proving any threat is whether a reasonable person against whom the alleged threat was directed would feel coerced. In this case, the only recipients of this statement of WSLC political strategy were legislators in sympathy with the WSLC; clearly no threat was directed against them. And undue influence presumes a situation in which free will is overcome and the person unduly influenced is incapable of bargaining or refusing - hardly the case where we hold all the power (and, again, where promises to act in the desired manner had already been made).

I fear the ethics concern articulated relative to the WSLC e-mail will prove to be as results-oriented and ephemeral a precedent as the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bush vs. Gore. We need to come up with some brighter-line tests lest the welfare of thousands of Washingtonians be put again into jeopardy by a single arguably errant, and certainly subjective, legal opinion that is able to put the halt to consideration of a bill.

Perhaps we should take State Patrol troopers off patrol to review each issue of Building Insight.

Rep. Brendan W. Williams
22nd Legislative District
P.O. Box 40600, Olympia, WA 98504-0600
(360) 786-7940 or Hotline at (800) 562-6000