PDC: No foul with labor council e-mail

The state Public Disclosure Commission won’t be pursuing action against the author of an e-mail that suggested donations from unions to Democratic groups be curbed until a controversial workers rights bill became law.

“Based on what we have we are not going to file a complaint ourselves,” PDC spokeswoman Lori Anderson told me this afternoon..

Last week the Washington State Patrol concluded no crime was committed by the Washington State Labor Council leader who wrote the e-mail then sent it to other labor leaders and copied it to four lawmakers. All four of the legislators backed the bill, known as the Worker Privacy Act.

When the state patrol finished its work March 17, they delivered the documents to the PDC – which by the way didn’t ask for them.

The PDC can initiate a complaint on its own. Members of the compliance and enforcement division did look at the e-mail and other papers left at the agency’s counter.

“We weren’t going to take an action based on the documents we received,” she said.

The labor council is pushing hard to get the bill revived. Having the PDC come to a similar conclusion as the state patrol may fortify the effort.

At the end of the line they still have to deal with Gov. Chris Gregoire.

She along with House Speaker Frank Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown decided to kill the bill and call the cops when they saw the March 10 e-mail. That decision still rankles a few labor leaders and lawmakers.

On Monday, Gregoire said she had “no regrets” about her actions. She said if the bill somehow came back to life and reached her desk, it better not apply to Boeing – one of the chief opponents — or it won’t get signed.

“I made it clear before this took place that if the bill applied to Boeing, it will not get past my desk,” she told reporters this morning.

As part of the stepped up efforts to get the bill resurrected, the WSLC today sent out a snippet from comments Gregoire made in 2008 at the Boeing Machinists Hall during the group’s political endorsement convention.

Here’s the excerpt:

“Like you, I believe that employees ought to be able to know they can go to work every single day, they’re not going to be intimidated, they’re not going to be coerced, they’re not going to be shoved around about whether their political rights are intruded, whether their religious rights are intruded, or their right to organize is curtailed. We’re going to make that happen in Washington State. We’re going to lead the nation in that regard.”