The reforms aren't new. Here's where to push.

Across the cases in this registry, oversight typically runs back up the same chain of command that approved the conduct under review. A state agency director responds to the state auditor; a county department reports to the executive who appointed it; a city department answers to the mayor. The pattern is structural, not partisan, and it shows up at every level. King County is one of the few large counties in the country without an independent IG, and a current proposal sits in the registry as KC-2026-007. At the state level, the same gap recurs: Trueblood v. DSHS reached a third federal contempt order in part because no in-state body had the standing or teeth to compel the structural fix. The DCYF child care subsidy system went four consecutive years with a disclaimer opinion on roughly $413M in federal funds. The Seattle Police Department surfaced major misconduct findings through outside investigation rather than internal controls. The fix is the same architecture in different containers: an inspector general office created by statute or charter, with subpoena authority, dedicated counsel, fixed-term protection from removal except for cause, and a reporting line outside the entity being audited. State-level options include expanding SAO performance-audit authority with subpoena teeth, creating a standalone State Inspector General, or empowering JLARC to refer findings directly to law enforcement. Local options are charter or ordinance creation of city and county IGs reporting to councils rather than executives. The legislature and individual councils can each act in their own lane.

Several cases involve findings by ethics bodies that carry no meaningful consequence beyond the finding itself. A documented violation that ends in a private letter does not deter the next one. Reform here is graduated, predictable enforcement: civil penalties indexed to office, mandatory public reporting of repeat findings, and clear referral paths for criminal conduct. State legislature and the boards themselves can act on this.

The Legislative Ethics Board (LEB) publishes a chronological opinions index covering 1995 to the present at leg.wa.gov/about-the-legislature/ethics/ethics-complaint-opinions, with stable per-opinion pages for each entry (e.g. /25-01/). That puts WA ahead of many state ethics bodies. The remaining gaps are structural. The index has no machine-readable export (no CSV, JSON, or RSS feed), no standardized outcome field showing whether a complaint resulted in a finding, a dismissal for jurisdiction, or a dismissal on the merits, and an inconsistent topic taxonomy that mixes capitalization, punctuation, and category labels across years. Multi-case rollups like "25-13 thru 15" collapse separate matters into single rows and single URLs, so a recurrence search treats one filer hitting five members as one event. Reform here means a machine-readable export, a standardized disposition field on every entry, a controlled topic vocabulary, and splitting rollups into one URL per respondent. The Board itself can act on most of this; the legislature can require it.

Multiple registry cases involve public money flowing from a state or county agency to a nonprofit subrecipient that then spent the funds with limited oversight. State and county audit standards require a defined percentage of subrecipient spending to be reviewed each year. The registry shows multiple cases where that percentage was not met. The fix is enforcement: tying agency director performance to subrecipient-monitoring rates and publishing those rates in budget documents.

Several cases trace back to large public contracts written and approved with weak conflict-of-interest checks, limited competitive bidding, or no post-award performance review. Procurement reform here means tighter conflict declarations for contract awarders, mandatory competitive thresholds, and standing post-award audits for contracts above a defined dollar level. Most procurement rules sit in agency policy and county or city code, where the legislative bodies that wrote them can change them.

A recurring pattern in LEB cases is the use of public staff time, public communications channels, or public facilities for what amounts to private or campaign work. The line between official communication and campaign communication is currently enforced after-the-fact, one complaint at a time. Reform here is preventive: clearer training, automatic logging of public-account use, and standing audit of constituent-communication tools during campaign cycles.

Capital projects and large agency programs in the registry routinely report cost figures against different baselines: ballot dollars, year-of-expenditure dollars, current-year dollars, sometimes silently switching between them. The public cannot meaningfully compare year over year. Reform here is a standing requirement that any agency publishing capital or program costs publish the baseline and dollar-year alongside the figure, every time. The legislature and the relevant boards can require it.

Several Seattle Public Schools cases involve federal grant programs where audit findings were issued, the district did not correct, and the findings then recurred in subsequent audit cycles. The federal dollars at issue are small relative to the district budget, but the pattern signals a compliance system that does not close findings. Reform here is an internal corrective-action tracking system that ties each open federal finding to a responsible owner, a closure deadline, and board-level reporting until closed. The district board can require it; the State Auditor can publish district-level recurrence rates.

Sound Transit and other multi-jurisdiction transit bodies in the registry have governance structures where elected officials sit on the board, the board hires the CEO, and individual board members may themselves be eligible for the CEO role. The cases here document the conflict-of-interest exposure that structure creates. Reform proposals range from clearer recusal rules for board members in CEO selection, to longer cooling-off periods, to restructuring the appointment chain. These changes sit with the boards themselves and with the legislative authorities that empower them.

Several cases involve appointments to public bodies that are either contested on conflict-of-interest grounds, or never made on time. Both failures share a common feature: the appointing authority operates without an enforceable performance standard. Reform here is straightforward in concept and difficult in practice: defined timelines with consequences for missed appointments, conflict screening done before appointments rather than after complaints, and a transparent register of pending appointments, deadlines, and dispositions. The legislature can codify the standards.

Multiple cases in the registry involve campaign finance complaints that ended in dismissal not because the conduct was clearly fine, but because the underlying rules were ambiguous, narrowly drawn, or written before the conduct was contemplated. After at least one such dismissal, the PDC then amended the rule. The pattern is the regulator catching up by case. Reform here means proactive rulemaking on predictable gray zones such as surplus-fund transfers, official social media accounts, and incumbent communications during campaign cycles, rather than amending one rule at a time after each dismissed complaint. The Public Disclosure Commission and the legislature can act.

When misconduct involves senior officials reporting directly to an elected executive, the lines between investigation, discipline, and political damage control blur. Cases in the registry show executives announcing personnel changes without a public record of who investigated, what was found, and which findings were referred onward. Reform here is procedural transparency: when a senior appointee separates under misconduct circumstances, the executive office publishes the investigative findings, the referral disposition, and the reform actions taken, on a defined timeline. Councils can require it by ordinance.

Large public IT modernization projects in the registry show a recurring pattern: budgets that escalate over years, schedules that slip without consequence, and oversight bodies that lack the technical capacity to challenge agency estimates. A workers compensation system at $31M spent over a decade with $292M now estimated to finish, and a transit project tracking from $2.7B at ballot to $5.3B in current dollars, are not isolated mismanagement; they are the structural result of weak IT project governance. Reform here is mandatory independent technical review at defined cost or schedule thresholds, published cost-to-complete estimates updated quarterly, and stop-or-restructure decision points tied to those estimates. The legislature and individual boards can require it.

School district cases in the registry trace back to staff who knew or should have known about misconduct against students and either did not report or reported late. Mandatory reporting laws already exist; the gap is enforcement and tracking. Reform here is a documented chain of custody for every mandatory report from receipt through resolution, public reporting of districts where reports stall, and clear personnel consequences when reporting duties are not met. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the legislature can act; districts themselves can adopt stronger internal protocols.

The Public Disclosure Commission is the front-line enforcer of Washington campaign finance and disclosure law, and the registry contains cases that test both its enforcement posture (complaints dismissed on close calls) and its institutional capacity (statutory deadlines missed on commissioner vacancies). Reform here is twofold: clearer standards and disclosure when the PDC dismisses on threshold grounds rather than the merits, and an enforceable backstop when the appointing authority fails to fill statutory vacancies on time. The legislature can tighten both; the PDC itself can publish dismissal rationales more consistently.

Senior personnel cases in the registry surfaced through outside investigation or media reporting rather than through routine internal HR controls. By the time misconduct reaches that level, the conduct has typically continued for some time. Reform here is structural: independent intake channels for complaints against senior officials, mandatory routing of such complaints to outside investigators, and clear public reporting when senior personnel separations follow misconduct findings. City and county executives can establish the protocols; councils can require them.

Several capital and benefits programs in the registry pass financial audit but never get audited on whether they actually delivered what was promised. A $297.8M housing program that builds units at $273K-$286K each, or a child care payment system flagged with $37M in questioned payments, can sail through year after year because the auditor is checking whether dollars were spent in compliance, not whether outcomes hit the published targets. Reform here is mandating performance auditing for large programs alongside financial auditing, with published baselines, and a standing requirement that the audit body report when outcomes drift. The State Auditor and the relevant legislative bodies can require it.