Public Disclosure Commission Dismisses Complaint on Former Transit Leaders

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The Washington State Public Disclosure Commission — tasked with tracking campaign finance activity in state elections — announced earlier this month that it had dismissed a complaint made last year against former Twin Transit manager Derrick Wojcik-Damers and former Twin Transit board member and current County Commissioner Bobby Jackson. 

“After a careful review of the alleged violations and relevant facts, PDC staff have concluded the investigation. Staff found insufficient evidence to demonstrate that officials of Twin Transit (Derrick Wojcik-Damers and Bobby Jackson) used the facilities of Twin Transit to promote the passage of proposition 1,” a letter from the PDC states.

The investigation resulted from an Oct. 24, 2018 complaint made by Winlock resident Mark Obtinario, who alleged that Twin Transit improperly used district funds to pay consulting firm Nelson Nygaard to create a website, brochures and mailers as campaign material for proposed expansion of the Lewis Public Transit Benefit Area taxing district — contrary to law.

Jackson and Wojcik-Damers maintained the materials Twin Transit, a public agency, paid for were informational only and not meant to sway anyone’s opinion of the proposal, which voters rejected.

In January 2018, the PDC announced it would initiate a formal investigation into the allegation. 

According to a letter sent by the PDC to Obtinario on Oct. 4, PDC staff reviewed his complaint and interviewed Jackson, Wojcik-Damers, Doug Hayden of Lewis Mountain Highway Transit and Nelson Nygaard staff. 

The investigation found that Twin Transit first contracted with Nelson Nygaard in 2017 for a feasibility study into expanding Twin Transit’s boundaries. Starting in March 2018, the agency created a website on the topic for Twin Transit to publicize the results of that study. 

That April, officials in Lewis County agreed to put the expansion measure on the Nov. 2018 ballot, and the website created by Nelson Nygaard “naturally evolved into an informational website about the ballot proposition,” according to the letter. 



“Staff found that it is the regular practice of Twin Transit to place information about its operations and major policy decisions on its website,” the letter reads. “However, in this case, Twin Transit, on the advice of Nelson Nygaard, decided to place the information about the 2018 ballot measure on a separate website that was already in existence for a related purpose, and that would be easy to find. Nelson Nygaard and Twin Transit officials acknowledge that they should have identified the website as being a Twin Transit website, and apologized for this oversight.”

Also at issue was the fact that the promotional material created by Nelson Nygaard for Twin Transit reported that if the ballot measure failed, Lewis Mountain Highway Transit would cease to exist due to an inability to pay state grant match requirements, despite the fact that this was not accurate. 

Hayden told the PDC in an interview that Jackson and Wojcik-Damers knew about the change. “In April 2018, at a transportation conference convened by the Lewis County Board of Commissioners, the future of LMHT was discussed,” according to a summary of Hayden’s interview with investigators. “Mr. Hayden said Bobby Jackson spoke first and said LMHT transit was going to be shut down because they could no longer meet the matching funds requirement. Mr. Hayden said Mr. Jackson’s narrative was not accurate. Mr. Hayden said he asked Bobby Jackson at the April 2018 conference how he was going to address the issue of LMHT’s required matching funds being capped at 10 percent, and was told, ‘they would take care of it and handle it.’”

Tim Payne, of Nelson Nygaard, said he had not been informed by Twin Transit  about the changes in state grant requirements that would allow Lewis Mountain Highway Transit to continue without being absorbed into Twin Transit’s boundaries until after the November election, and would have changed the information on the website and mailers if he had known.

Hayden told the PDC he told Payne of the change in Aug. 2018.

Wojcik-Damers also told the PDC he knew about the changes to LMHT’s grant requirements in early 2018, but said he didn’t know that meant the agency was no longer in danger of folding.  

The PDC also investigated the fact that the mailer was only sent to registered voters. The PDC recommended that Twin Transit in the future follow PDC guidelines on not targeting informational mailers only to registered voters.