Gregoire fined for campaign donation violations

State finance regulators fined the campaigns of Gov. Christine Gregoire, state Sen. Karen Fraser and several others Wednesday.

Public Disclosure Commission Chairman Ken Schellberg fined Gregoire's campaign $500, half of it suspended, and ruled that the acts were "unintentional" violations.

Gregoire's campaign accepted about $12,000 in donations from five out-of-state political-action committees that were ineligible to donate because each had not received at least $10 in the preceding six months from at least 10 Washington donors.

Jenny Durkan, an attorney and friend of Gregoire's, told Schellberg that the errors were "clearly unintentional" and that the campaign had procedures in place to ensure such errors didn't happen.

She said that after the problems "slipped through" and the PDC notified the campaign, it sent the money back — even though the complaint came in the campaign's final week in October.

The state Republican Party filed the original complaint, but its spokesman had no immediate comment. The case was heard in a brief enforcement hearing in which the parties agreed to a recommended fine, and only the commission chairman and parties were present.

The GOP complaint was filed when Gregoire backers forced Republican candidate Dino Rossi into giving depositions related to a lawsuit claiming builder groups raised funds illegally to help Rossi.

One donor giving $2,800 was the Bill Ritter for Governor PAC in Colorado, which had no Washington donors in the past 180 days, according to the state GOP complaint. Four other PACs were cited, including two in New Mexico, one in Pennsylvania and one in New York.

In the Fraser case, the longtime Thurston County senator apologized to the commission and said it was her first violation since she started filing reports in 1974, commission assistant director Doug Ellis said. Schellberg fined Fraser $225 but suspended $125, finding that her treasurer's failure to file a report due Oct. 28 was unintentional.

"My treasurer had been away on a trip, and with all the busyness of coming back from a trip plus an active family plus a busy professional life, it got overlooked," Fraser said after the hearing. "I didn't know anything about it until I got the notice from the PDC. I've been filing campaign reports since the PDC law went into effect ... I'll be paying a modest fine, and it won't happen again."

Fraser said her treasurer, Linda Myhre Enlow, had worked for her campaigns for a decade and never slipped up before. Fraser easily defeated Erik Lee, and PDC investigators said her missing report was filed Nov. 18.