NEWS | POLITICS “DEMS IN DISARRAY,” CONTINUED... send reports directly to the Washington state PDC. At least, it was supposed to.
THE LOST TREASURER
Justin Galloway, former volunteer treasurer for the Spokane County Democrats, is not inexperienced when it comes to campaign finance. A certified public accountant, he’d been the Democrats’ treasurer since January of 2014. He was the treasurer for Stuckart’s city council campaigns in 2011 and 2015. And Galloway wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with NGP software. “The first filing he did in 2015 was using NGP’s portal,” Stuckart says. “Justin talked about how difficult it was.” But whether because of time, obstinance or technical snafus, as soon as the Democrats switched over to NGP, Galloway stopped filing PDC reports with the state. Galloway, reticent to speak on the record, only says that new software prevented the upload of the reports, and that, while he reached out to the party for help with the PDC problems, he didn’t feel like he’d received it. Though CastroLang said he raised concerns with the party’s board, nobody seemed to be freaked out. Everyone was busy. The Democrats’ office manager quit. CastroLang came down with six weeks of bronchitis. His son, Nick, got married. His dad died. Galloway joined Stuckart’s mayoral election campaign in April. (Stuckart says he had no idea that Galloway wasn’t filing PDC reports for the Democrats.) And during this whole time, there was a presidential election to run. “That’s what saddens me the most about the whole
22 INLANDER APRIL 13, 2017
entire thing,” Biviano says. “The reason [the mistakes] happened is people were focusing on the election. Because they wanted to care about the things that affect people.” According to the party’s internal investigation, CastroLang didn’t put his foot down, demanding in an email that all PDC reports be submitted, until July. In retrospect, CastroLang wonders if he should have been tougher. “I treat volunteers differently than I treat employees,” CastroLang says. Officially, Galloway resigned at the end of July. But for the rest of the year, nobody filled the treasurer position. CastroLang says he tried to find a new treasurer, but with so many competent treasurers already tied to election campaigns, nobody wanted to take on such a big responsibility. “In hindsight, it would have been prudent to stop all the presses, and tell the executive board, we can’t do anything else [until a treasurer was hired],” CastroLang says. Instead, with occasional help from the former treasurer, CastroLang tried to complete months of unsent PDC reports himself. “All PDC reports are now timely after aggressive catch-up starting in July,” CastroLang said, according to October meeting minutes. “No complaints with PDC have been received.” In January 2017, a screening committee narrowly recommended hiring a different candidate for the executive director job, but the party decided to stick with CastroLang, for at least the next six months. Only later did the Democrats realize the extent of the damage. In fact, CastroLang had made numerous mistakes, a subsequent review showed. Because accounts
Spokane County Democrats Chair Andrew Biviano says that CastroLang’s skill with fundraising compounded the problem — a flood of donations meant a bigger challenge to report them accurately. DANIEL WALTERS PHOTO weren’t set up and information wasn’t correctly entered into the software, important donations were never reported to the state. CastroLang says he didn’t realize that Galloway’s signature, auto-filled by the software, continued to appear on PDC reports after the treasurer’s resignation. Small mistakes compounded into huge ones. Take the $6,900 check written to the Spokane County Democrats from the Spokane Firefighters Union PAC in January of last year. State law caps unrestricted donations from a committee to a political party to $5,500 a year.