washington business
In Their Words
Bob Ferguson was elected Washington’s 18th attorney general
in November, 2012, succeeding Rob McKenna. Ferguson,
a Democrat, previously served for nine years on the King
County Council. During his first year in office he helped
the state implement a voter-approved initiative legalizing
recreational marijuana, pressured federal officials over
Hanford cleanup, filed a consumer protection lawsuit against
a Richland florist who refused to sell flowers for a same-sex
marriage and sued the Grocery Manufacturers of America
for failing to disclose the source of campaign donations
against Initiative 522. Washington Business writer Jason
Hagey sat down with him in January to reflect on those cases
and his agenda going forward.
Attorney General Bob Ferguson
Last year, you were new in office and you decided not to
push a major legislative agenda. This year, you called on
lawmakers to pass four bills related to veterans, consumer
protection, open government and sex offender treatment.
How did you go about choosing those four?
The way I arrived at those four bills was by issue area, primarily. I
picked four areas that I’ve had a longstanding interest in, and will
continue to have as attorney general and it’s reflected in those bills:
Veterans’ issues, open government, public safety issues and consumer
protection. So we have essentially a bill for each of those four areas.
I like those bills to be bipartisan and connected to my office in some
way. I’m not interested in some bill that’s a grandstanding issue.
How is the bill you proposed to take the state off
the hook for attorney fees when it loses a consumer
protection lawsuit different from the one that Rob
McKenna proposed?
The main difference, I believe, is he had a provision in his bill about
the attorney general being able to bring consumer protection action
on behalf of consumers outside Washington state. We don’t have that.
It’s not in this bill. So this bill is strictly related to the attorney’s fees
provision. We are literally the only state in the country where if the
attorney general brings a consumer protection action and we lose, we
pay attorney’s fees. Every other state in the country, that’s not the case,
and for I think some fairly compelling reasons. Any time you’re the only
state where you’re doing or not doing something, I think it’s useful to
have a conversation about that.
20 association of washington business
How often does that situation occur?
Thankfully, not very often. We’re very thoughtful about the cases
we bring. That’s not just me. That’s AGs before, my predecessors
were very careful about the cases to bring. Also, of course, not very
many cases go to trial. When I was a lawyer in private practice, not
very many cases went to trial. Most cases settle. That’s the case
here as well. We get thousands of complaints related to consumer
protection that we receive in our office, very few end up having a
complaint filed and fewer still end up being fully litigated. However,
we’re not going to win every case we bring, even if we think we are
in the right, you can lose a case for a technical reason.
Now that you’ve been attorney general for a year, how is
the job different than what you expected and what do you
hope to accomplish beyond the 2014 legislative session?
The one advantage of a long, hard campaign is that you spend a lot
of time talking to a lot of people about the office and the issues, so to
be perfectly candid there weren’t any great surprises. Obviously, it’s
a new operation for me, there are more than 1,000 employees, I’ve
got a lot to learn when I walk in the door, but I wouldn’t say there’s
anything that was a big surprise as a result of taking the job. … The
most important thing is, whenever I’m done being attorney general,
I would, above all, want the people to say that I ran an independent
office. The legal advice we provide to our clients and the work we
do on behalf of the people of Washington is done in an independent
fashion, that we go where the law takes us, and we’re not making any
decisions based on political pressures or anything else.