(The Center Square) – During this year’s legislative session an Office of the Washington State Treasurer employee sought feedback from a private advocacy group on a bill that the OWST did not testify on, which one organization has described as granting “undue influence.”
House Bill 1217, enacted this session, set new limits on rent and fee increases, revised notice requirements, and capped deposits and fees. According to emails obtained by The Center Square, OST’s Environmental, Social and Governance Advisor Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer communicated with several individuals with the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, which according to its website is a “nonprofit watchdog organization focused on the growing private equity and broader private funds industry.”
In Jan. 9 email, Mehta-Neugebauer wrote to PESP staffers that “Rep. Alvarado’s housing bills (HB 1217) was pre-filed today. There is a section on manufactured/mobile homes and I thought you might want to take a look (starting page 11). If you have any comments, please let me know.”
One PESP staffer replied that “I’m also no expert on laws specific to manufactured homes, but I also agree that the provisions related to rent increases are good.”
A PESP consultant wrote to Mehta-Neugebauer that “I am by NO means a manufactured housing or modular expert, but this looks good to me.”
In a statement to The Center Square, Eric Ventimiglia of Pinpoint Policy Institute wrote that “the Washington State Treasurer’s office outsourced official state functions to a far-left advocacy group with zero expertise in housing policy. On the same day legislators requested input on a bill, a staffer in the Treasurer’s office forwarded the draft legislation to her former employer asking for red-line edits – giving an extreme out-of-state group undue influence over the legislative process.”
When The Center Square reached out to the OWST for comment, Communications Director Aaron Sherman noted that Mehta-Neugebauer no longer works at the agency.
“Our office did not take a position on the legislation or testify on the bill,” he wrote in an email. “We routinely field inquiries from legislators on various financial matters during session and throughout the year, it seems as though that was the case here.”
