UPDATE on BIAW suit: Rossi could face questioning on Oct. 15

• Published October 06, 2008

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REVISED: Another legal action has been filed over allegations of campaign finance violations in the neck-and-neck Washington governor's race.

Two former Supreme Court justices who filed complaints earlier in the year against the Building Industry Association of Washington have now filed a suit in King County Superior Court against the BIAW. They also filed a notice to file a suit that also accuses Republican candidate Dino Rossi of coordinating illegally with BIAW to raise funds for independent expenditures that now are helping Rossi.

The citizen action suit would proceed if state Attorney General Rob McKenna, who has ties to fellow Republican Rossi, does not act. Click here for background and a description of the action on lawyer Knoll Lowney's Web site.

The BIAW has spent more than $2 million on the governor’s race including hard-hitting ads that raise questions about Gov. Chris Gregoire’s relationships with tribes and her veto of $3 million in foster-care funding.

The new accusations are made by ex-justices Faith Ireland and Robert Utter. They earlier filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission against the BIAW over its one-year delay in reporting $585,000 in insurance-rebate funds it put into a fund later transferred to its ChangePAC political committee. AG McKenna has already filed suit in that case, alleging wrongdoing by BIAW.

But the new action raises a more difficult problem for Rossi, if it is true. In effect it says Rossi illegally coordinated fund-raising with the BIAW and builder groups in 2007 at a time Rossi claimed he was not a candidate. The suit is based on calls Rossi made to the Master Builder Association of King & Snohomish Counties in April 2007, and the association’s own minutes describing the BIAW and fundraising show that Rossi called top MBA officials.

If Rossi were deemed to have violated campaign law, he could not benefit from the funds in question, according to Lowney, the attorney at the center of several legal actions against the BIAW, MBA and now Rossi.

Lowney failed to get a court order a week ago that would have kept BIAW from using its so-called "retro" insurance program profits in the governor's race.

Rossi has acknowledged making calls in April 2007 to the Master Builders Association of King & Snohomish Counties, but he said last week he was only trying to mediate a dispute between BIAW and the locals. "We never talked about money or anything like that; it wasn’t what the purpose was," Rossi told the Seattle P-I.

We'll all have to stay tuned.