Ethics panel dismisses complaint against Locke

OLYMPIA – An ethics complaint against former Gov. Gary Locke has been dismissed.

Locke personally solicited corporate contributions for the National Governors’ Conference that Seattle hosted two summers ago.

State ethics law usually forbids such solicitations and puts a $50 limit on gifts to public officials.

Locke made about 30 fund-raising phone calls and signed solicitation letters on National Governors Association stationery. The governor was raising money to help defray costs of holding the 2003 gathering.

The host committee collected at least $720,000 in donations from about 18 companies with about 155 state contracts, according to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based free-market think tank.

The group filed a complaint with the state Executive Ethics Board last year. Locke left office in January.

The panel, in a ruling reported by The Olympian newspaper Wednesday, said the complaint was “obviously unfounded or frivolous.”

“There is no evidence that Governor Locke granted contributors direct access to the governors during the only events that he could have controlled access to: the ‘unofficial’ social events,” the board said.

The watchdog agency said contributors, including The Boeing Co., received “no special access” to the nation’s governors.

Boeing gave $150,000. It was the same year Locke won legislative approval for $3.2 billion in tax breaks for the aerospace industry, an incentive for Boeing to choose Washington for its new Boeing 787 assembly plant.

Locke is now a Seattle attorney.