‘Internal grifting operation’: WA Senate leader Jamie Pedersen’s business benefits from CCA, We the Governed finds

Government officials in Washington may be legally profiting from laws they help pass, Glen Morgan, founder of the citizen watchdog organization We the Governed, warned on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio.

“I think people need to start paying attention to more, in our state, to this kind of internal grifting operation that exists in government, where insiders pass laws that they personally profit from, and they make lots of money off of it,” he said. “And it’s unethical, it reeks of corruption and insider dealing, but it may very well be legal in our state, and that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be talking about it, because it’s not what most of us would think of when we’re thinking of public servants going down to Olympia and doing the people’s work — usually means they’re supposedly working for us and not for themselves and their personal enrichment.”

After doing some digging, Morgan found Washington State Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen is writing laws that benefit the company he works for. When he’s not working in politics, Pedersen is the Executive Vice President of construction company McKinstry. Morgan noticed Pedersen, who has been deeply involved in a number of recent tax bills, including the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) and the millionaire’s tax, is using the CCA to bring business to his company.

“He’s making somewhere around a quarter million to half million dollars a year from McKinstry, which is fine, nothing wrong with that, except that McKinstry is a company that in his part time job in the Legislature, he’s essentially writing bills that create laws that send business directly to his company, and his company gets a lot of sole source, no bid, contracts to do these environmental building standard reviews, and they get Climate Commitment Act funds and all this other money that comes through his business, and he gets a cut of that,” Morgan explained.

Morgan noted Pedersen doesn’t just get a cut in the payroll, but that, according to Pedersen’s financial records, he is a percentage owner of McKinstry.

“So he gets essentially dividends or ownership payouts that have basically increased year by year, tracking with the bills that he’s able to get through the legislature,” Morgan said. “So that’s money that comes right back into his pocket.”

Jamie Pedersen’s McKinstry stake is legal under Washington’s 10% ownership threshold

KIRO host John Curley noted that Pedersen isn’t doing anything illegal, as Washington law states lawmakers are not violating the law as long as they don’t own more than 10% of the company.

“He owns 1% of McKinstry. So he gets paid,” Curley said. “So when he’s not down there making sure that the rich people pay their fair share, he’s working for this company.”

Morgan noted Pedersen has also lobbied the ethics board and the Public Disclosure Commission to prevent the public from seeing who his clients are at McKinstry.

“So we’re only seeing a fraction of, actually, how much influence that business that he works for — and he’s legal counsel and vice president, it’s not like he’s the frontline receptionist there — and so he’s making strategic business decisions for them on a regular basis,” he said. “And then when he goes down to the Legislature, he gets to pass the laws that profit and allow his company to grow exponentially directly as a result of those laws.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jcurleyshow