Realtor group's account of expenses disputed

State regulators have filed their second campaign-finance complaint of the year against the Washington Association of Realtors, this time alleging that the association improperly reported its spending on Republicans in races for governor and attorney general.

The executive director of the Public Disclosure Commission, Vicki Rippie, filed her complaint last week, and the agency is launching a full investigation, spokesmen said this week.

The complaint also named the GOP campaigns of Attorney General Rob McKenna and gubernatorial hopeful Dino Rossi.

The Realtors denied wrongdoing in a statement released by group spokeswoman Barbara Lally.

"Washington Realtors believe that we acted fully within our constitutional rights to communicate information and education to the public as well as to our own members, and we feel that we will be fully vindicated," the statement said.

The PDC complaint said there is reason to believe the campaigns of McKenna and Rossi both violated campaign laws by accepting over-limit contributions. The violation is based on what appears to have been coordination between the campaigns and the Realtors that should have limited contributions to $3,200.

The complaint says:

• Realtors may have violated the law by spending $414,229 on electioneering communications opposing Gov. Chris Gregoire; the Realtors argued to the PDC that it was an issues piece that didn't advocate for or against a candidate, according to PDC documents.

• Realtors' Quality of Life PAC, in effect, made over-limit contributions of $28,888 on behalf of McKenna's campaign after McKenna had provided fundraising help to the Realtors' Political Action Committee. That PAC had funded the Quality of Life PAC.

• The Realtors PAC and Quality of Life PAC both, in effect, made over-limit contributions to Rossi of $497,806. Rossi allegedly gave fundraising help to R-PAC before it sponsored its ads.

The governor's race this year was the most expensive in state history, with roughly $44 million raised or spent by candidates and third parties.

The PDC allegations do go so far as to suggest that the Realtors, Rossi or McKenna conspired to get around rules that forbid coordination between campaigns and independent groups. But they do say that actions the Realtors and Mc Kenna campaign took made the PACs ineligible for independent expenditures on behalf of Mc Kenna.

Realtors paid $80,000 in fines earlier in the year to settle an earlier complaint over failing to fully report $953,000 in transactions during 2004-07 — including $310,000 in independent expenditures during 2004. Another $50,000 of fines were suspended on condition the group did not have further wrongdoing.

"The complaint just came out on Friday, so we'll start the investigation and see where it leads," assistant PDC director Doug Ellis said Monday. "Next we go through the investigative process. We basically ask them for a response, then follow through on getting documents, interviewing witnesses — those kind of things we normally do on an investigation."

Ellis offered no deadline or time frame for the work. Under the law, the PDC can refer a case to the attorney general to seek higher fines or sanctions, if the PDC's five citizen commissioners deem a transgression too serious.

But in this case, the PDC would have options under the law to appoint an independent counsel, like it did in the 1990s when Gregoire was attorney general, Ellis said.

Adam Faber, a spokesman for what is left of McKenna's campaign, said he had no immediate comment. Spokesmen for Rossi could not be reached immediately to comment Monday.