Suit contends affirmative action campaigners didn’t pay companies that gathered signatures to get initiative passed

When the campaign to change Washington’s affirmative action laws turned in thousands of petitions to send the initiative to the Legislature, sponsors bragged that they had a record number of signatures for such an effort.

But they didn’t mention that those signatures hadn’t been paid for.

Nearly nine months later, the One Washington Equality Campaign still owes more than $1 million to the companies it hired to get Initiative 1000 to the Legislature. Owners of those signature companies, who usually expect money up front but in this case agreed instead to a promissory note on the eve of the signature turn-in deadline, filed suit this week in King County to get paid.

They contend they were duped by the campaign chairman, former state Rep. Jesse Wineberry, and given a false sense of security by an organization that listed three former governors as honorary co-chairs and spokespersons.

The legal battle has erupted as supporters and opponents of I-1000 are gearing up for the general election. Although the Legislature passed the initiative, opponents successfully mounted their own signature campaign to give voters a chance in November to affirm or block it.

Some groups that supported the signature campaign, including the Washington State Labor Council, have switched their support to a new organization, the Washington Fairness Coalition. It’s trying to convince voters to ratify the initiative while distancing itself from the original sponsors.

The coalition didn’t exist until August, it said in a recent statement. The workers should get paid, but ultimately that’s the responsibility of the companies themselves, it contends.

“As a separate entity, the WA Fairness Campaign has a separate leadership team from, and shares no legal or fiduciary responsibilities with, the One WA Equality Campaign,” the coalition said in its statement.

Mark Lamb, an attorney who represents signature-gathering firms Citizen Solutions LLC and Your Choice Solutions LLC, is suing both campaign organizations, plus yet-to-be-named companies and political organizations associated with One Washington.

Lamb conceded that it may have been unprecedented for the firms to collect so many signatures on only the promise of payment. Signature-gathering often involves the use of contractors and subcontractors, with local and out-of-state crews fanning out across Washington for a big push ahead of a deadline and expecting prompt payment.

Roy Ruffino, one of the owners of Citizen Solutions, regularly works with initiative promoter Tim Eyman, who is usually on the other end of the political spectrum from the people backing I-1000, Lamb said. “Roy had never done business with these people before.”

“They were told repeatedly ‘You’re going to be paid,’ ” Lamb said. The campaign was also supported by former Govs. Dan Evans, Gary Locke and Christine Gregoire, who testified in favor of I-1000 when the measure came up for legislative hearings.

“They believed, on some level, (the former governors) just wouldn’t let this happen,” Lamb said.

Although the promissory note called for monthly payments of more than $100,000, the campaign never delivered more than a fraction of that amount to pay signature gatherers. After the initiative was presented to the Legislature, contributions dropped; after it passed, they dried up almost entirely, reports on file with the Public Disclosure Commission show. Some months, much of the money that did come in was used to pay for expenses of Wineberry and other staff members, or to repay loans.

The signature companies were strung along, Lamb said, with requests to not “upset the apple cart.”

After opponents of the initiative forced the law onto the ballot with Referendum 88, Wineberry filed to form a new campaign committee, Approve I-1000, with the PDC. But that committee has yet to report a single contribution.

In August, a separate group of political activists leery of the way the signature campaign had been handled filed a new committee, Approve R-88/ Opportunities for All. It got $20,000 in seed money from Microsoft and another $20,000 from the Labor Council before changing its name to Washington Fairness Coalition in mid-September.

Lamb called the new name “Orwellian” for a group that includes the state’s labor organizations and, he contends, is trying to avoid paying workers.

But David Groves, communications director for the Labor Council, said the coalition is separate from One Washington and doesn’t owe any money, even though it’s named in the lawsuit.

The only thing the two committees have in common is the same vision, Groves said: “We want to see I-1000 pass.”

Evans, who has appeared in a commercial for the initiative, described the new campaign as a “meshing” of different groups. “Some of it’s continuing, some of it’s new,” Evans said.

He believes the people who “did the grunt work” of gathering signatures will get paid eventually, though he conceded, “They’ve got a long way to go.”

But the companies like Citizen Solutions might not get what they’re owed, Evans added.

“That’s a business,” Evans said. “They know that they took the risk.”

Whether that risk will pay off for them might be up to the King County Superior Court.