Legislative Money

We’ll start with initiatives, the process by which a group of Washington voters can propose a law. Let’s look at spending on initiatives in recent years. How much was spent in each of these years?
    2010: $60 million
    2009: $7 million
    2008: $9 million

 1. Under ‘Search the database,’ navigate to ‘Committees’ and then ‘Initiatives.’ 2011 is too young -- let’s look at spending in 2010.
    a. How much was been raised for initiatives in 2010? $61 million
    b. How much was spent? $60 million


2. We now have an alphabetical list of committees. That’s great if we know the name of the committee we’re interested in examining. But in this case, we don’t.

3. Each column header allows us to sort the data in different ways. For example, if we click on the ‘Spent,’ we can rank the committees by spending.

   a. Click on ‘Spent.’ (You’ll notice that it shows the money from lowest to highest. We’re interested in big money, so let’s click on the column header again to reorganize most to least.)
        I. Which committee has spent the most money this year? Stop the Food & Beverage Tax Hikes
        II. Which initiative is the committee opposing? CIT To Protect our Economic Future
        III. What would the initiative do? Stop food and beverage tax increases
        IV. How much have the supporters of this initiative raised? (Hint: Click the column header ‘Ballot’ to group by initiative.) $16 million
        V. Who won? Check Google. Stop Food and Beverage Tax Hikes
 c. Let’s look closer at the committee that outspent all others. Who funded it? To the left of the committee’s name, click on ‘Details.’
        I. Which individual group has contributed the single largest donation to this committee? American Beverage Association
        II. Where is this group based? DC
        III. When was the last donation from this group sent to Washington state?(Specifically, what’s the date?) 8/26/2010

IV. How many separate contributions did the group make to this committee? 9

V. In total, how much money did it send to the committee in August 2010? About 17 million