House Bill 1781 amends enforcement procedures in existing Public Disclosure Commission statutes (RCW 42.17A.755 and RCW 29B.60.020). It modifies how the commission and its executive director handle complaints by authorizing the commission to dismiss or resolve matters after preliminary review, to initiate investigations and hold hearings under the Administrative Procedure Act, or to refer matters to the attorney general. The bill also directs that the commission and its executive director may not consider a respondent’s partisan affiliation in determining resolutions. The bill establishes procedural changes and penalty rules: it authorizes delegation by rule to the executive director to resolve remediable violations or technical corrections using a commission-developed, rule-based scoring system; it requires processes for stipulations where respondents may agree to allegations and pay penalties according to a schedule; it authorizes orders requiring cease-and-desist and the remedies listed in the cited statutes; it permits assessing financial penalties up to $10,000 per violation (with penalties imposed only after an APA hearing), allows waivers for first-time violations but escalating penalties for repeat violations and an enhanced-penalty schedule, and restricts waiver of penalties for non-remediable matters to unanimous commission approval. Orders remain subject to judicial review and, if not satisfied and no petition for review is filed within 30 days, the commission may seek judicial enforcement. The commission may refer matters to the attorney general when it determines additional authority or greater penalties may be needed. The bill imposes timing requirements: an initial hearing must be held within 90 days of filing a complaint, and if the commission does not take action within 90 days a complainant must give written notice to the attorney general and simultaneously provide the commission a copy. Section 1 of the act expires January 1, 2026, and Section 2 takes effect January 1, 2026. The extracted text is incomplete in places: definitions of terms such as “remediable violations” and “technical corrections” are not provided here, some statutory cross-references and rule criteria are not included, and part of the text was truncated, so some procedural details and the full contents of Section 1 and Section 2 cannot be confirmed from these excerpts.

If enacted, the bill pushes the Public Disclosure Commission to resolve complaints faster and more uniformly: initial hearings must be held within 90 days, the commission cannot factor a respondent’s partisan affiliation into resolutions, and it must create rule-based scoring and stipulation processes so some technical or remediable violations can be fixed quickly by the executive director or by a respondent agreeing to a penalty schedule. Financial exposure for respondents becomes clearer and potentially stiffer—penalties up to $10,000 per violation after a formal hearing, the possibility of waived penalties for first-time violations, and successively higher penalties for repeat violations—while the commission can refer harder cases to the attorney general when it lacks authority or the penalty needed exceeds its limits. The most affected parties are the Public Disclosure Commission (which must write new rules, scoring criteria, and penalty schedules and will likely see changes in workload and coordination with the attorney general), people and groups designated as respondents (including political committees, who gain a faster path to resolve remediable errors but face defined fines and escalating consequences for repeats), complainants (who must notify the attorney general if the commission takes no action within 90 days), and the attorney general (who may receive more notices and referrals). The text leaves unclear exactly which provisions expire or begin on the listed dates and how “remediable violations” or “technical corrections” will be defined in rule, so some operational details and timing remain to be finalized.