State dismisses allegations that Spokane City Councilman Zack Zappone violated campaign finance disclosure law

Ellen Dennis, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
·2 min read

Aug. 1—The state Public Disclosure Commission has dismissed allegations that Spokane City Councilman Zack Zappone violated campaign finance disclosure law.

Back in May, the state agency issued a decision that changed how candidates can transfer leftover funds from prior campaigns. The PDC received a complaint alleging Zappone should be reprimanded for moving roughly $7,900 from his failed 2020 state Legislature campaign into his 2021 Spokane City Council campaign fund without naming donors and checking that contribution limits were met.

In June, the PDC deferred action at a meeting in Spokane on whether Zappone retroactively violated the recently reinterpreted campaign disclosure law.

In Washington, individual donor contributions are capped at $1,200 to a candidate for a single election. That amount is doubled to $2,400 if a donation is for both a primary and general election.

Historically, when a candidate had leftover funds from a previous race, they could roll over those surplus funds into a new campaign and go on to collect contributions from donors who had maxed out in the previous race. Previous PDC guidelines also did not require candidates to disclose donors in a rollover fund or ask for their consent to use their donations in a new election.

The PDC clarified in May that the rollover guidelines only applied to candidates running multiple times for the same office. The state agency also changed the rules and said rolled-over donations must include the donors' names and other information.

If it happened today in the same way, Zappone's 2021 surplus transfer would have violated campaign finance laws. But since it happened before the rules changed, the PDC chose not to retroactively reprimand Zappone.

On Thursday, the state agency met and later issued a 7-page order dismissing the allegations against Zappone.

Zappone "reasonably relied on the guidance of the PDC in place in 2021 when the surplus funds were transferred," the order reads. "The Respondent did not know, nor could have known, of the 2023 interpretation in 2021."

The state agency also wrote in the order that the 2021 election campaign and general election had concluded, and that campaign funds spent or distributed in prior election years in the case of Zappone was "unwarranted."

The order did not specify how other campaign surplus complaints in the state involving more recent rollover transfers will be handled by the PDC.

Ellen Dennis' work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.