Bremerton Lawmaker Fined $15,000 for Ethics Violations Tied to Nonprofit Job, Plans Appeal

Washington's Legislative Ethics Board fined Rep. Tarra Simmons, D-Bremerton, $15,000 on Friday after finding she violated three conflict-of-interest and special-privilege laws tied to a nonprofit that paid her $120,000 a year while she was helping direct public grant money toward it. The nine-member board's decision, released as a 15-page ruling roughly six weeks after a two-day public hearing, also dismissed three other allegations against her, including claims she used campaign funds to help a friend keep a nonprofit job. Simmons, who represents the 23rd Legislative District covering Bremerton, Poulsbo, Kingston, Hansville and Bainbridge Island, denies any wrongdoing and says she will appeal the decision to Thurston County Superior Court, arguing the board is not the neutral arbiter her case deserves. The ruling lands days after she won her August primary election and just months before a November rematch for the seat she has held since 2021, and it is the second ethics-related finding against her this year.

What the Ethics Board Actually Found

The board's ruling, issued Friday afternoon, concluded unanimously that Simmons committed three separate violations of the state's Ethics in Public Service Act and imposed the maximum $5,000 penalty for each, plus the state's attorney costs. All three centered on Simmons's dealings with two nonprofits, the American Equity and Justice Group and the Equity in Education Coalition, according to the Kitsap Sun, which republished reporting from the nonprofit outlet Washington State Standard.

The board also dismissed three other allegations that had been part of the June hearing: that Simmons improperly helped a friend land a nonprofit job, that she used surplus campaign funds to indirectly pay for that friend's position, and that she worked for an organization receiving state funding. A complaint filed in February 2025 triggered the investigation that led to Friday's decision, which followed months of proceedings that Simmons has said she treated as a chance to clear her name rather than settle quietly.

The case is notable for how it played out procedurally as much as for its substance. Simmons has said she rejected earlier settlement offers so she could defend herself in a full hearing against charges she believed were driven by personal animus and politics rather than genuine misconduct. That choice is part of why the board's written findings run to 15 pages, laying out its reasoning violation by violation instead of a brief order, and why the case took roughly six weeks to resolve after the hearing closed rather than being settled quietly months earlier.

How a $1 Million Grant Became a Conflict of Interest

Two of the three sustained violations trace back to a $1 million state grant Simmons helped secure in 2024 to expand a public dashboard of criminal justice data built by the American Equity and Justice Group. The grant came with a requirement: the group had to subcontract $500,000 of the work to a nonprofit focused on equity in technology and education. The only organization that qualified was the Equity in Education Coalition, where Simmons had worked as part-time director of strategy from December 2023 through Jan. 10, 2025, then continued for three more months as an independent contractor.

During the June hearing, an assistant attorney general representing the ethics board's staff argued that Simmons's interest in directing the money through a budget proviso conflicted with her official duties, regardless of whether she personally profited in a direct sense. The board agreed, concluding in its written decision that Simmons "personally benefited" because the grant sustained the coalition's operations and, by extension, her $120,000 annual salary there.

The second violation grew out of a dispute between the two nonprofits after the American Equity and Justice Group complained to the state's Administrative Office of the Courts that the coalition wasn't completing the work required under the grant. Christopher Stanley, the office's chief financial and management officer, spoke with Simmons about the dispute before meeting with both groups; the contract terms were then revised in the coalition's favor. Stanley testified he did not feel pressured by Simmons. The board found otherwise, writing that it could "infer, and does infer," that Stanley was improperly influenced by the conversation. It also found that Simmons was "not credible" when she denied swaying the outcome.

A Late-Night Text Exchange Became the Third Violation

The board's third finding is the one most directly about retaliation rather than money. Two weeks after Kim Gordon, an employee and board member of the American Equity and Justice Group, filed the complaint that triggered the investigation, Simmons engaged the group's leader, Anthony Powers, in a lengthy late-night text exchange. In it, Simmons expressed frustration with Gordon and threatened to withhold her support for Powers's organization unless he reined in the employee who had filed against her.

The board's decision describes this as Simmons attempting "to influence the outcome of the Board's investigation through her attempted retaliation against the complainant in this matter." Of the three sustained violations, this is the one that turns on her conduct after the complaint was already filed, rather than on the underlying grant or contract dispute. It is why the board's order reads less like a dispute over how public money moved and more like a finding about how a sitting lawmaker responded to being investigated.

Powers's organization had also been the subject of a separate, smaller financial episode: Simmons had donated $10,000 to the American Equity and Justice Group from her campaign account, a donation later returned amid the ethics review, according to reporting by InvestigateWest. That donation was not one of the three sustained violations, but it shows how tightly the financial relationships among Simmons, the two nonprofits and their leaders were wound together before the text exchange took place.

Simmons Denies Wrongdoing and Plans to Appeal

In a statement after the ruling, Simmons called the fine unfair and excessive, arguing she was penalized more heavily for contesting the case than she would have been for settling it. "People shouldn't be excessively punished when they actually prevail," she said, pointing to the dismissal of three of the six original allegations as evidence she had largely won. She said she plans to appeal in Thurston County Superior Court, where she can "finally be heard by a non-political entity lacking any personal interest in the outcome."

Simmons has represented the 23rd District since 2021 and is now seeking a fourth term. She serves as deputy speaker pro tem and has drawn national attention as the first formerly incarcerated person elected to a state legislature anywhere in the country. At the June hearing, she tied that history to her ethics compliance: "I grew up in really difficult beginnings. I was in foster care and was in jail, had a really rough life, and so the fact that I'm even here and the first in the nation who's been incarcerated and who became a state representative, that's why I take this very seriously," she said, according to KUOW. She has said she consulted the ethics board multiple times since taking office, citing the built-in tension of Washington's citizen-legislature model, where lawmakers routinely keep outside jobs tied to the policy areas they vote on.

That tension is not unique to Simmons, but her case shows how sharply it can cut when a lawmaker's outside employer is also a beneficiary of state money she helped direct. Washington's part-time Legislature assumes citizen-lawmakers bring real-world expertise from their day jobs. The ethics board's ruling is, in effect, a finding that the same structure let Simmons's day job and her legislative role become financially inseparable in a way the law does not allow, even without proof that she personally pocketed the grant money.

A Second, Smaller Complaint Already Settled

Friday's ruling is not the only ethics matter Simmons has resolved this year. A separate complaint filed with the state's Public Disclosure Commission on Dec. 23, 2025, by Val Torrens, chair of the 23rd District Democrats, alleged Simmons improperly disposed of $30,000 in surplus campaign funds by donating it to Better Minds Better Communities, a Las Vegas-based nonprofit that has not filed IRS paperwork since 2021 and had no active website. The complaint split the local party organization; at a contentious January meeting, members voted 14-11, with nine abstentions, to try to rescind Torrens's complaint, though the PDC investigated it regardless.

The PDC found in May that Better Minds Better Communities was registered with the Washington Secretary of State but not as a charitable organization, which state law requires before a campaign can send it surplus funds, and that two other organizations Simmons had donated to, in 2024 and 2025, had the same problem. Simmons signed a "statement of understanding" on April 28, acknowledging a violation without admitting she personally benefited, and paid a $300 civil penalty to close the matter without a full PDC hearing. She has publicly framed the complaint as political, noting that Torrens is a leading donor to Daria Ilgen, the Democrat challenging her for the seat.

Read together, the two cases point to a pattern in how Simmons has used money that passes through her campaign and legislative roles, even though the ethics board and the PDC are different bodies applying different laws to different funds. The $300 PDC penalty concerned how she disposed of leftover campaign cash. The $15,000 ethics board fine concerned how she used her official position to direct grant money and respond to the person who complained about it. Voters weighing both cases before November are being asked to judge not one complaint but two, filed roughly ten months apart by two different people, that separately concluded Simmons crossed a line.

What It Means for the 23rd District Before November

Simmons beat Ilgen 57.3% to 39% in the August primary, a comfortable enough margin that the ethics ruling's real test will come in the general election rather than in any immediate threat to her seat. Both will appear on the November ballot for Position 1 in a district that includes Bremerton, Kitsap County's largest city, along with Poulsbo, Kingston, Hansville and Bainbridge Island. Her appeal in Thurston County Superior Court is unlikely to be resolved before voters decide, meaning the $15,000 finding will stand as the operative fact of the case through the campaign regardless of how the appeal eventually turns out.

For Kitsap County voters, the ruling adds a concrete data point to a race that had already featured one ethics-adjacent controversy this year. Simmons's response, contesting the larger case while settling the smaller one, suggests she is drawing a distinction between what she sees as a legitimate mistake worth $300 and a politically motivated overreach worth fighting in court. Whether that distinction persuades voters in the 23rd District, or whether two separate findings against the same lawmaker in one year read as a pattern regardless of her explanation, is now a question for November rather than for the ethics board. Either way, Simmons will be defending her record in front of Kitsap voters twice this year: once at the ballot box, and again, eventually, in a Thurston County courtroom.

The Vyraa Newsroom