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The youngest member of the state Legislature is on a collision course with the Legislative Ethics Board, and she’s not slowing down.

Rep. Melanie Stambaugh of Puyallup, 26, told the board this week that some of 44 ethics rules she is accused of violating don’t reflect advancements in technology. That is because the board is interpreting a 1994 ethics law, which bans incumbents from using public resources for political campaigns.

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However, that ethics law was created before the age of social media. The rule is intended to maintain access to public records while blocking the use of state resources in campaigns. ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio’s Dave Ross points out that it was focused on keeping state employees from doing campaign work.

“Right. Very different set of facts in those days,” former Attorney General Rob McKenna responded.

Back in the 90s, it was discovered that state employees were being used to video tape challengers and producing campaign literature using state equipment, McKenna says.

Someone in their 20s, who has grown up with social media, sees it as a standard of communication, Dave says. So, embedding a video into a campaign website isn’t something that is considered to be against the rules. Plus, embedding a video or photos already created at the state level doesn’t incur additional expenses, he says.

The problem, McKenna says, is the board found that because people could access the videos on Stambaugh’s website, instead of being sent to an external source, is somehow misappropriating state resources.

Lawmakers have been found guilty of this before. What set’s the Puyallup native apart is that she isn’t rolling over.

“Most legislators shrug and say ‘I won’t do it again,'” McKenna said.

Of course, the board could say if the intent of the law is not to give incumbents advantages over their challengers, the law still applies because the challenger wouldn’t have access to the same content, Dave says.

“Having run for office myself, I had to pay for the photos I used,” he said.

“The best argument the board can make is that we don’t want to encourage legislators to have more videos and photos taken for future campaigning,” McKenna added.

Though the ethics board says embedding a video isn’t an exception to the law and that links to them is the standard, Stambaugh says embedded videos are important because links “look like jargon.”