Lawyer: Rossi violated campaign laws

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published October 01, 2008

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BIAW spokeswoman Erin Shannon also denounced the claims, calling it "another desperate attempt by Knoll Lowney to keep his name in the press while he continues his full-time, non-stop assault on BIAW. Lowney is a professional harasser, not to mention a liar. He told a judge last Friday that there is no political motivation behind his attack on BIAW, yet that was clearly a lie."

Shannon also said the BIAW "never received one penny" from the other builder group for its Rossi effort.

Lowney posted his claims on his law firm's Web site, including meeting minutes from the Master Builders Association of King & Snohomish Counties. Three leaders of that group — Joe Schwab, John Day and Doug Barnes — said they received calls from Rossi in the spring of 2007 about their financial participation in the Building Industry Association of Washington's campaign "war fund" for the governor's race.

The Public Disclosure Commission, which investigated and recommended charges against the builders over failures to report funds they collected, considers the new information "vague" and won't be reopening any cases, PDC spokeswoman Lori Anderson said.

But Anderson did say investigators with Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna's office might want to look at the material as part of two ongoing lawsuits and investigations into the BIAW and the King-Snohomish builders group. Those lawsuits grew out of the PDC's earlier investigation.

The Master Builders Association disputed Lowney's claim in this statement:

"Prior to Dino Rossi announcing his candidacy for governor in October of 2007, we never had discussions with him about funding a Rossi campaign. We have never spoken with him about fundraising tactics in association with BIAW's gubernatorial program.

"Knoll Lowney's allegations appear to be a politically motivated effort to damage Rossi's campaign."

When the PDC looked into the master builder and BIAW activities this year, it found both groups should have reported details of their fundraising in 2007. The BIAW collected $585,000 from 11 local builder groups that it failed to report until August 2008, when it transferred the funds to its ChangePAC committee. The master builders failed to identify where hundreds of thousands of other dollars originated.

Aaron Ostrom, leader of Fuse, said Rossi's campaign was ducking the question of whether he solicited the money. Rossi clearly called three leaders of the master-builder group, according to minutes from the group's May 2007 meeting.

Ostrom said in an e-mail that the allegations against Rossi "are serious: that Rossi was an active participant in the BIAW's fundraising campaign to build a war chest for attack ads in the governor's race — a campaign that is now being prosecuted as illegal by the attorney general."