With vacancies filled, WA campaign watchdog returns to full strength

The Washington Public Disclosure Commission’s two newest members attended their inaugural meeting on Thursday, marking the first time in more than a year that the state’s chief enforcer of campaign spending rules operated at full strength.

Matt Segal and Teebah Alsaleh, both appointed last month, filled seats on the five-member commission that were vacant for months, one since January 2025.

“I want to express my appreciation for the opportunity to be here and join in the important work that we all are doing,” Segal said at the outset of the meeting. “I look forward to working with everyone here as well as with the public.”

Alsaleh followed, drawing a laugh, with a quick “what he said.”

Their arrival brought a quiet end to an odd chapter for the first-term governor, Bob Ferguson, who made their appointments under threat of recall.

Campaign finance activist Conner Edwards filed a petition on April 1 to remove Ferguson from office simply to prod him into filling the two long-empty seats on the commission.

Ferguson responded swiftly. 

On April 16, he installed Segal, a founding partner at Pacifica Law Group and former King County Superior Court judge. His firm serves as private counsel for Ferguson.

Segal filled the vacancy left by the January 2025 resignation of Commissioner Allen Hayward, the longtime counsel for the House Republican Caucus. Segal’s term runs through the end of 2030.

A week later, Ferguson appointed Alsaleh of Seattle, a senior corporate counsel for Microsoft. Alsaleh takes over for Nancy Isserlis, who left the commission last August. Her term runs through the end of 2029.

All five members of the commission are lawyers and three are also former judges.

“We now have as much legal ammunition as many state Supreme Courts,” commission chair J. Robert Leach said in welcoming the newest members on Thursday.

Segal’s selection has drawn criticism because of his firm’s ties to the governor and Attorney General Nick Brown, who worked for Pacifica Law. Attorneys of the firm have also represented labor and progressive groups in a variety of legal challenges to ballot measures sponsored by Let’s Go Washington, the conservative political group founded and led by Brian Heywood.

Segal has not said whether he’d recuse himself from hearing any complaint involving past or present clients of the firm.