Every legislator in Washington State files a financial disclosure called an F1. It lists their income, their spouse's income, any businesses they own, and whether anyone in their household is a registered lobbyist. Separately, the state publishes all campaign donations and all lobbyist registrations.
These three databases are public. All on data.wa.gov. None of them are cross-referenced by the state.
We built a tool that connects them and flags structural overlaps between a legislator's financial interests and their legislative authority.
The screener checks each legislator against six criteria. Points accumulate. Higher scores mean more structural overlap.
If a PDC-registered lobbyist lives in the same home as a legislator, the lobbyist's clients have a direct financial relationship with the legislator's household. This is the most direct conflict the screener can detect.
If a legislator owns a company that gets paid by state agencies whose budgets the legislature controls, there is a structural incentive to protect that funding.
Large household income from a company or industry creates a financial interest in how that entity is regulated. Scored once regardless of how many sources.
If a legislator or their spouse earns money from an organization that also employs registered lobbyists in Olympia, the legislator has a financial relationship with an entity actively trying to influence the legislature.
Outside employment is not inherently a conflict. But each non-government income source increases the surface area for potential overlap with legislative duties. Government income (state agencies, school districts, military, retirement) is excluded.
A complex financial picture makes it harder for voters to assess where conflicts might exist. This flags legislators with unusually dense financial structures.
Significant structural overlap between finances and legislative authority
Potential structural overlaps worth further review
Minor flags, worth watching in future filings
No significant structural overlaps identified in current filing
Phase 1: Automated screening. The screener is a Python script that pulls every F1 filing from data.wa.gov, identifies legislators, cross-references their income sources against the lobbyist registration database, pulls campaign contribution summaries, and assigns a numerical score. It is a first-pass filter. It can only see what the three databases contain. It cannot see city-level contracts, federal filings, or filing discrepancies between state and federal documents. Every card on the legislature page without a "Full Analysis" link is a Phase 1 automated result.
Phase 2: Editorial investigation. Legislators with a "Full Analysis" link have been investigated beyond the automated screen. These deep-dive profiles are hand-researched editorial analyses built from public records, federal LM-2 filings, city contract databases, legislative history, and other sources the screener cannot access. Their curated scores replace the automated score. Phase 2 profiles include jurisdiction tags on each section identifying which enforcement body (LEB or PDC) has authority over the concern raised. Phase 2 profiles are editorial work, not legal findings. They do not constitute determinations that any law has been violated.
A high score is not an accusation of corruption or a legal finding. "Structural overlap" is a term we coined. It has no recognized meaning in Washington ethics law (RCW 42.52). A score measures the complexity of financial relationships between a legislator's private interests and their public authority. A legislator can have a high score and be acting with complete integrity. The point is that voters deserve to see the overlap and decide for themselves.
A clean pass is not an endorsement. It means the automated screen did not find structural overlaps in the current filing. It does not mean none exist.
This is nonpartisan. We apply the same methodology to every legislator regardless of party. Democrats, Republicans, incumbents, and candidates are all scored identically. We publish clean passes alongside findings because the methodology matters more than the results.
The state constitution envisions part-time legislators who maintain outside careers. Outside income is expected, not inherently problematic. The "outside income over $30K" factor (3 pts) flags structural complexity, not wrongdoing. A teacher, a farmer, and a fund manager all score the same on this factor regardless of whether their work overlaps with their committee jurisdiction. We acknowledge this is a blunt instrument and that the citizen-legislator design (codified in the RCW 42.52.330 safe harbor) intentionally protects legislators with outside careers.
PDC F1 disclosures report income in bands ($0-$30K, $30K-$60K, $60K-$100K, $100K-$200K, $200K-$500K, $500K-$750K, $750K+). A legislator at the bottom of a band and one at the top receive the same score. All dollar references on this site should be understood as approximate ranges, not verified figures. Some filers have PDC-approved modifications or exemptions that affect what appears on their disclosure.
Washington distributes ethics oversight across multiple agencies. The Legislative Ethics Board (LEB, RCW 42.52.310-.320) oversees legislators. The Public Disclosure Commission (PDC, RCW 42.17A) oversees financial disclosures, campaign contributions, and lobbyist registrations. These are separate bodies with separate enforcement authority. Our profiles now tag each section with the relevant jurisdiction so readers can distinguish between LEB ethics concerns, PDC disclosure concerns, and structural transparency questions that may not fall under any enforcement body.
Under RCW 42.52, there is no blanket recusal requirement for legislators whose spouses are registered lobbyists. A recusal obligation arises only when a legislator participates in a specific transaction that would directly benefit their spouse financially. When our profiles note that no recusal was filed, we are describing normal legislative practice under current law, not implying that a recusal was required and omitted.
Incumbent means the legislator appears in the official legislative roster and reported legislative income on their F1.
Candidate means the person filed an F1 for a legislative office but did not report legislative income during the filing period. They are running for a seat, not currently serving.
Washington requires all candidates for state office to file financial disclosures, not just incumbents. Both are included because voters deserve the same transparency from the people seeking power as from the people holding it.
Every claim on this site is independently verifiable. All data comes from the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission via public APIs.
Sunshine Docket is operated pseudonymously. We understand this invites skepticism from readers who might reasonably ask why a project demanding transparency from public officials does not fully identify its own operators. The tension is real, and we take it seriously.
Our answer draws on a tradition as old as the republic. The Federalist Papers were published under the name "Publius." The Anti-Federalist responses appeared under "Brutus," "Cato," and "Federal Farmer." Thomas Paine published Common Sense anonymously. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that anonymous political speech is protected under the First Amendment, most directly in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995), precisely because the ability to speak without retaliation is essential to democratic accountability.
The organizations whose financial relationships we document employ dozens of registered lobbyists, retain law firms, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to influence legislation. We have seen how these organizations respond to public criticism. Pseudonymous operation is not a preference. It is a practical necessity for individuals who maintain careers and families in Washington State.
What we can disclose: no operator of Sunshine Docket holds a financial interest in any legislator, political committee, lobbying firm, or entity profiled on this site. No operator is employed by or affiliated with any political party, campaign, or advocacy organization. No operator has filed or intends to file an ethics complaint based on this site's findings. This project is self-funded. It accepts no advertising, sponsorship, or outside funding.
Every factual claim on this site is published alongside its verification source. Each profile page ends with a "How to Verify Every Claim" section listing the exact API endpoints, filing IDs, and public record references used. Any reader with a web browser can independently verify every number, every income range, and every relationship we report.
The screener's scoring logic is fully documented on this page: six factors, specific point values, defined thresholds. The data sources are four public APIs, listed above. A technically inclined reader can reconstruct our methodology from this page alone. We believe this open-book approach, where the evidence is cited inline and the logic is published, provides stronger accountability than releasing source code that most readers would never examine.
For deep-dive profiles (Phase 2), our editorial investigations cite federal LM-2 filings, city contract databases, legislative history, and other public records. Each source is named. Each claim is attributed. If we got something wrong, the citation trail makes it findable.
If you find an error, tell us. We correct publicly and note what changed. We do not silently edit published findings.
All legislators and other individuals profiled on this site are invited to respond at sunshinedocket@proton.me before or after publication. We will publish substantive responses in full, unedited, alongside the relevant profile. We would rather be corrected than be wrong.
Featured investigations are selected based on automated screening scores, supplemented by editorial judgment about structural significance. The automated screener runs identically across all 201 legislators regardless of party. Legislators with the highest scores are prioritized for Phase 2 investigation. The current legislature is controlled by Democrats, who chair committees and therefore have greater structural overlap between their financial interests and their legislative authority. Republican legislators are investigated on the same criteria when the data warrants it. The current featured set includes members of both parties.
Washington State has a robust press corps. It has beat reporters who cover Olympia full time. None of them have published the analysis you see on this site. The three databases we cross-reference (F1 financial disclosures, lobbyist registrations, campaign contributions) are all public. They have been public for years. Connecting them requires no special access, no FOIA requests, no confidential sources. It requires a script, a weekend, and the willingness to publish what the data shows regardless of which party it embarrasses.
The following outlets cover the Washington State Legislature professionally and have the resources to do this work. None of them have:
The Seattle Times · The Spokesman-Review · The Olympian · Crosscut · The News Tribune · PubliCola · The Stranger · TVW · Cascade PBS · The Washington State Standard
We do not say this to criticize reporters who work hard under shrinking budgets. We say it because voters should know that the structural financial relationships of their legislators are not being systematically reported by anyone in the professional press. The data has been sitting in public APIs for years. We just connected it.
We would also note The Burner Seattle, which covers local politics with particular enthusiasm for progressive causes. Its operators maintain undisclosed financial and organizational ties to Progressive People Power PAC (P3), a political committee that funds candidates in the same races The Burner covers editorially. The Burner has not disclosed these ties to its readers. We mention this not because The Burner is obligated to do what we do, but because a publication that styles itself as accountability journalism while operating an undisclosed PAC relationship is a useful illustration of why this project exists.
We are not the only people doing this work. The following projects, tools, and data sources inform what we do, and we recommend them to anyone interested in holding government accountable.
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