TACOMA — Four people under prosecution by the Attorney General’s Criminal Litigation Unit for charges related to evading cigarette taxes entered guilty pleas mid-trial yesterday. The defendants imported hundreds of thousands of cigarettes from other states or tribal reservations, then sold them at their Puyallup smoke shop without paying required taxes.
OLYMPIA — The Washington State House of Representatives today approved a bill to reduce youth access to vapor products with a bipartisan vote of 74-20. The state Senate had previously passed the legislation — which combined multiple proposals, including agency request legislation from Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Governor Jay Inslee, as well as a bill introduced by Sen. Bruce Dammeier (R-Puyallup) — in a 37-6 vote.
OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inlsee will today sign into law Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s agency-request bill to increase transparency in government by enhancing penalties for knowing violations of Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).
OLYMPIA — The Washington State Senate today approved a bill to reduce youth access to vapor products, in a 37-6 vote. The bill combines multiple proposals, including agency request legislation from Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Governor Jay Inslee.
SEATTLE — Attorney General Bob Ferguson today offered the following statement regarding the U.S. Supreme Court denying an attempt to invoke its original jurisdiction in Nebraska and Oklahoma v. Colorado.
SEATTLE — Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s Public Counsel Unit today challenged PacifiCorp’s proposed $20 million electricity rate increase over two years, and instead recommended the utility’s rates be reduced as much as $4.5 million. Public Counsel believes the increase for residential customers is unsupported by the evidence.
SEATTLE —Attorney General Bob Ferguson today announced the claims process for consumers to recover their share of a $63 million recovery in a price-fixing enforcement action brought by the Attorney General’s Office.
SEATTLE — A Thurston County judge ordered a California company that scammed new Washington property owners into buying overpriced deeds to pay more than $3.6 million today, after granting summary judgment in a lawsuit brought by Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
SEATTLE — Attorney General Bob Ferguson today announced that his office has put a stop to the deceptive business practices of a Seattle-based man and his three companies who will pay back as much as $7,750,000 to approximately 165,000 consumers nationwide.
OLYMPIA — Late Friday, a U.S. District Court judge resolved the latest lawsuit in Washington’s long-running efforts to hold the federal government accountable for the cleanup of nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation with a 102-page ruling and related orders. In an often scathing assessment of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the court decried the federal government’s “total lack of transparency.”