March 26, 2011 in City

Assessor office requests traced to ex-employee

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Anonymous requests for hundreds of thousands of Spokane County assessor’s records have been traced to a former employee.

Appraiser Josh Bungen, who resigned Jan. 5, used untraceable Hotmail email addresses to request what Assessor Vicki Horton said was enough documents to cripple her office.

Bungen’s 16 requests included a demand for every email ever sent or received by the assessor’s office. Before Bungen abandoned all his requests except for the emails, county officials delivered about 4,000 electronic “pages” containing records of a quarter-million property sales.

The data was placed in a special account on the county computer network for the still-anonymous Bungen to download.

When he did so, county officials identified Bungen by capturing the network address of his home computer. Bungen had used the same address to log into the county computer network while working from his home.

Bungen said in an interview Thursday he is working on a whistleblower complaint.

Horton, who took office in January, believes Bungen is trying to hobble the assessor’s office because he resents her election victory over Ralph Baker.

She said her office delivered 7,688 electronic pages this week. To produce the information, a county employee spent eight hours reviewing 3,653 emails that required redactions.

Horton said she can’t afford to devote more than an hour a day to the project. Based on progress so far, she estimated the job will take 18 years.

Bungen said his attorney advised him not to say what he’s trying to find.

It’s something that happened while Baker was assessor, “something that got them to where they are today,” Bungen said. “But it wouldn’t have been anything that he was responsible for.”

One of Bungen’s anonymous emails, sent Feb. 5, disparaged Horton with language similar to Baker’s in a letter to the editor that was posted Feb. 4 on The Spokesman-Review’s website.

“When I saw his letter, I just used the same verbiage in my emails because it sounded pretty good,” Bungen said. “But Ralph had nothing to do with the records request.”

Bungen’s caustic prose in a letter to the state Department of Revenue while working in the Klickitat County assessor’s office, from Jan. 12 to March 10, was “very offensive and out of line,” according to Klickitat County Commissioner Rex Johnston.

The letter invited state officials to intervene in what Bungen suggested was commissioners’ complicity in the “chronic gross negligence” of an assessor who was voted out of office in November.

Bungen would have been fired if his five-month emergency appointment as chief appraiser had been under commissioners’ control, Johnston said in the board’s March 1 meeting.

Bungen said his fill-in position ended when Karen Reisenauer, a Spokane County appraiser who resigned March 4, was given the permanent job.

Klickitat County’s new assessor, Darlene Johnson, said Bungen did an “awesome” job and wasn’t fired.

19 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  worthasecondlook on March 26 at 8:57 a.m.

  Politicians can be lazy and corrupt that is why these laws for public disclosure exist. I applaud anyone who takes the initiative to take their own time and energy to get these public documents and put the pieces of the puzzle together to assure that the public is getting what they pay for in taxes. If Horton doesn’t want the job, I am sure there are a dozen who will do the job in her stead.

• 

  cjkids02 on March 27 at 10:16 a.m.

  This does not suprise me, this Joshua Bungen when working for spokane County was a bit crooked in my eyes. He threatened to enter my home with out my permission for his assessor duties. (Which I’m no lawyer but sure seems like a violation of my rights). When other county employees were told of this nothing was done. I think he probably belongs nowhere near government employment. Furthermore, he does not belong working in a position utilizing technical equipment, as he wasnt smart enough to hide his IP address…..LOL, what comes around goes around JOSH!

• 

  Ron_the_Cop on March 27 at 4:16 p.m.

  Mr. Craig,

  There is more to this story then the is S-R Reporting. You apparently were at the same meeting that Tim Connor referenced in his own reporting re the potential destruction of public records by Ralph Baker et al. How come no mention by the S-R?

  “Something You Probably Don’t Know”

  … The Spokesman-Review’s coverage of Horton’s remarks about the suspicious records requests drew an indignant letter to the editor from Ralph Baker who wrote: “Our new county assessor, Vicki Horton, complains about large public records requests. She seems to imply that I’m the requester, but I’m not. Responding to records requests is an important part of the assessor’s job—customer service. The office is paperless, so I don’t understand why this is so difficult to manage.”

  But, of course, one of the reasons Horton was telling the commissioners that her new job was so hard to manage is that someone had deleted a large cache of work files before she took office.

  Horton’s revelation of the wholesale records deletions from her office’s computers was met with conspicuous silence from the three commissioners on February 1st, none of whom asked a single question about it.

  Before Ralph Baker hung up on me Monday night, he simply said, “I’m not interested, thanks” after I identified myself as a journalist. Commissioner Al French did not respond to an email and a telephone message requesting an interview for this story.

  Could this be related to what former Sheriff Tony Bamonte alleged in his criminal complaint alleging that Baker was giving preferential property tax assessments he sent to SPD Chief Kirkpatrick that she marked “returned to sender?”

• 

  worthasecondlook on March 27 at 6:35 p.m.

  CJ,

  State law allows the assessor or her agent to inspect your property, with a deputy sheriff, if need be so maybe you weren’t being threatened but asked to obey the law, and maybe the employee wasn’t trying to be sneaky and didn’t care if the ip was visible as he was also operating within the law with the requests. I am sure nobody gives a crap about having gubmint jobs these days with the furloughs, layoffs and increases in benefit premiums and people like you trashing them for all that low pay so it would seem this employee outsmarted them all and rid himself of you.

• 

  shanusmaximus on March 28 at 10:08 a.m.

  @worthasecondlook

  “If Horton doesn’t want the job, I am sure there are a dozen who will do the job in her stead.”

  Hard to do your job when the first day you walk in and the computers from the former Assessor are wiped. You speak of tax payers getting their dollars worth? How are we going to get our dollars worth if the Assessor would have to spend all of her time going through these requests? Mr. Bungen said, “It’s something that happened while Baker was assessor, “something that got them to where they are today,” Bungen said. “But it wouldn’t have been anything that he was responsible for.”
  So……Baker is running everything but is largely clueless about what Mr. Bungen is talking about? HAHA! No, no, no. This is classic Saul Alinsky overwhelming the system. I do not believe Mr. Bungen is trying to blow any damn whistle and if he wasn’t worried about people knowing who he was, why set up the untraceable Hotmail account?? Then his lawyer doesn’t want him to say what whistle he wants to blow? Why not go talk to Viki Horton himself with his suspicions and grievances? It has to be the same deal that Barbara Kent and Debi Mason were talking about…but old Ralphie was not part of it no, no, no. What a bunch of crap.
  Why was Ralph Baker reluctant to talk to Randy Shaw? Then all of the sudden Randy Shaw’s properties come under review by the Assessors office? Remember that? You guys are trying to spin it to try and make Viki Horton look like an incompetent to cover up your own criminal accomplice. IMHO.

• 

  jjb on March 28 at 11:59 a.m.

  manus/ron/bamonte/shoop….always a pleasure, though fiction and news are usually kept separate. When is some new fiction coming coming from your camp? Published or blogged? I have the books and they sit right next to my stephen king collection.

• 

  Ron_the_Cop on March 28 at 1:55 p.m.

  JJB,

  LOL - fiction - I wish! I let the readers decide what the truth is. However first the S-R should report the story.

  Readers here should read this fascinating blog by Mr. X that has largely reached the same conclusion that we have reached without our input:

  Spokane Economic And Demographic Data
  Raw and Uncensored – Economy, Jobs, Education, Government
  http://inlandnw.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/afterword/#respond

• 

  shanusmaximus on March 28 at 1:57 p.m.

  @jjb

  It isn’t manus/ron/bamonte/shoop(? Shook) are not the problem. People with damn blinders on are the problem. It is the problem with this whole damn town. Anybody who tries to investigate or do anything to expose the corruption are character assassinated and/or blocked by this paper and certain government “officials”. What the hell is this? PRAVDA in the old Soviet Union? Do you actually believe everything is on the up and up here? If you think so you couldn’t deduce your way out of a wet paper bag.

  I pray for the day that the corruption is exposed and this gangster government is dragged out into the light of day and the people involved are thrown in the slammer. I pray for the day that THE PEOPLE in this town are not treated like mere chattel only for the benefit of a group of cattle barons. Hell, they don’t even care if somebody DIES!! It is beyond sick and greedy…..it is outright evil. Wake up and smell the sulfur….but then again I may be asking the devil to smell his own stink.

• 

  jjb on March 29 at 9:04 a.m.

  All,

  1. ISD can provide a clone of any employee drive for any historical date in 24 hours. So if Horton claims that slowed her down it was her lack of knowledge of the job and the abilities of her resources that slowed her down.
  2. I am asking for emails for the last 5 years which are all digital and so the time required to provide is entirely dependent on how much redacting horton wants done.
  3. The issue is not about the prior whistleblower but involves Horton’s activities while being a union shop steward and employee prior to running for election. There are also other elements to the records request.
  4. No spin is needed to make horton look incompetent or not. Her interviews thus far show her complaining about doing the job and excuses why she may not succeed in the future. She didn’t take the job with the caveat that she would not be able to do it if she had to provide public requests for the emails of the past five years. For 88k/yr and 45 support employees she should be able to provide the emails requested.
  5. Baker didn’t complain about the whistleblower or fraud complaints filed during his tenure, which turned out to be without merit according to several audits both at the county and state level. The reason he didn’t is because he was getting paid to do the job and manage all aspects of the office.
  6. All hotmail email addresses are anonymous so when I created an account I used a hotmail account name that was relevant to the job it was involved with hence “accountableassessors.” The first time someone asked me if it was my account (John Craig) I said, “Yes.” Nobody has ever asked me prior or since. Anonymity was never part of the plan as the requests were and still are within the law.
  7. If you don’t like the laws in place then perhaps you should take the initiative to change them or privatize the assessor’s office so that it doesn’t have to answer to the taxpayers. Until then, I plan to promote transparency and accountability in public office through all the legal means available to me.
  
  Josh

• 

  Ron_the_Cop on March 29 at 10:02 a.m.

  @JJB AKA Josh,

  I just sent this email to Mr. Craig -

  Mr. Craig,

  FYI - Whether you believe what poster JJB in your article thread on the Assessor’s Office who claims to be Bungren, is telling the truth or not, the fact that he posted in your article thread is very interesting. As I wrote you previously (see below) this may be related to the criminal complaint that former Sheriff Bamonte filed with SPD Chief Kirkpatrick re former Assessor Ralph Baker allegedly giving preferential property tax appraisals.

  Having some expertise in computer forensics I do understand what JJB is saying but on the other hand as he acknowledges there is some duty to redact personal information re PRRs that may interfere with a structured dump of this data.

  My burning question is whether there is any truth to the data destruction that Ms. Horton told the County Commissioners about as reported previously by Tim Connor “Something You Probably Don’t Know”. I can understand to some degree why hard drives of departing employees/officials are “wiped” but on the other hand business/public records related material must be first archived on the County’s IT system before the drives are wiped.

  The question is whether this data on these hard drives was dump on purpose with the intent of destroying public records? If so this would be a criminal act that requires investigation by the appropriate law enforcement agency. I would think the appropriate Spokane law enforcement entities would self- initiate an investigation without waiting for complainant to come forward and or the Commissioners should order/compel such an investigation because of the seriousness of the offense.

  BTW Commissioner French should recuse himself from any deliberations on this matter because of what Connor has already reported re French and Baker sandbagging Mager at the last minute in last year’s Commissioner election in the article I linked to above.

  Mr. Craig I believe this to be newsworthy. Will the S-R report? And yes, I’m aware that the Cowles Company according to Bamonte’s criminal allegation was the beneficiary of some of these favorable property tax appraisals.

  Whether this is true or not, seems to me the S-R has a duty and obligation to report on these serious charges.

  Det. Ron Wright (Retired)

• 

  jjb on March 29 at 2:30 p.m.

  If she has 40 employees at 40 hours a week and is dedicating 5 hours to my records request that is .002 of her total resources. How is that crippling? If it takes 18 years to get the records all these people will be dead or retired so maybe that is the motivation t trash me in the press and call me a liar, disgruntled and intimidating when I was an exemplary employee and have letters of recommendation from all four of my supervisors/bosses the month I resigned. Maybe the public has no stomach for this and it should remain buried.

• 

  Ron_the_Cop on March 29 at 4:23 p.m.

  JJB,

  I’m a veteran of political infighting involving police unions and administrators/elected. However what concerns me the most is the alleged deletion/destruction of public records.

  Read carefully Shook’s reporting re Sheriff Bamonte’s allegation of Baker gave preferential property tax appraisals. If some of this is true then criminal acts were committed. That’s the bottom line beyond internal squabbling.

  Could you shed some light on this? My sources indicate this wasn’t simply Baker’s computer hard drive being wiped but was the removal of a computer file with sensitive public records from the server. Fortunately a lot of these records have been restored from system backups.

• 

  jjb on March 29 at 4:50 p.m.

  Ron,

  I telecommuted Nov and Dec and took vacation in Jan until I resigned so I was not in the office loop for the end of the year etc. If Baker “gave” preferential assessments then there would be an appraiser involved as Baker does and did not have an appraiser accreditation from the DOR to do appraisals. He never asked me to change any of my thousands of assessments. The buck always stops with the appraiser as it is their license that is at stake if they are improper. That said, there are a couple of appraisers in that office that have made developers deals that I ran across in my time there. Some were even inland paper properties that I got assigned and found the deal so I removed and recalculated. Of course, they appealed and wanted the old deal from the prior appraiser.

  There is also a problem with some areas in the county where when something sells the appraiser will only increase the selling property but not the similar properties in that area. This is unethical, biased and the DOR calls it sales chasing. The correct way to do it is as follows: If the property goes up 10% and you know that it is not the land increasing due to vacant land sales then you apply that 10% increase to all similarly sized and built homes in that neighborhood. The reason people will not do this is they know there is more chance of appeals. Appeals are time consuming and often volatile interactions with the taxpayer but they are part of the job.

  Keep in mind that if the assessments in a neighborhood are not uniform then the recently sold properties will shoulder te majority of the tax burden and th levy rates will be skewed due to nonuniformity. These problems are deep rooted in the office and should be made public so the public can make their own decisions about who they want to do this job. Ralph was not an appraiser and trusted that the appraisers were honoring their oath of being unbiased and ethical and the majority of them are. Ralph never promoted me but was always open and fair to me. We worked on bringing the first telecommuting policy to the county to save office space and energy. We also worked on getting a lump sum reimbursement for the appraisers as they use their own vehicles. With a lump sum you make the appraiser get more work done per trip to an area vs. mileage rates promote multiple trips to an area with less work done to beef up your paycheck. It is also hard to budget the mileage rate method.

  Ralph was progressive and pushed through lots of cost saving things but the problem with innovators is that after they clean stuff up then they have to move on down the road due to the people’s hurt feelings from the change. It is bittersweet.

• 

  Ron_the_Cop on March 29 at 5:18 p.m.

  JJB,

  Thanks for your observations. Do read what Sheriff Bamonte was alleging re Cowles Co, IEP and various Cowles family trust entities regarding their property tax assessments. Many of these parcels were left undisturbed for many years.

  I would be interested in hearing your opinion. Do you see any irregularities here?

• 

  jjb on March 29 at 5:38 p.m.

  I don’t see a link.

• 

  Ron_the_Cop on March 29 at 7:01 p.m.

  JJB - Here’s the relevant links you requested.

  Larry Shook’s blog:

  America’s Most Dangerous Cop -

  The Spokesman-Review, a newspaper operated by a family whose proven conduct fits the legal definition of organized crime, proclaims that Anne Kirkpatrick is the best police chief in Spokane history. That’s a warning, says a famous sheriff.

  [Re SPD Chief Kirkpatrick blowing off Sheriff Bamonte’s criminal complaint on Ralph Baker]

  http://larryshook.com/2010/05/12/america%E2%80%99s-most-dangerous-cop/

  For that matter scroll down to some of Shook’s other reporting pieces like:

  Spokane’s Anarchist Mayor

  http://larryshook.com/2010/05/12/america%E2%80%99s-most-dangerous-cop/

  America’s Most Patient Cop

  http://larryshook.com/2010/10/29/americas-most-patient-cop/

• 

  jjb on March 30 at 8:30 a.m.

  Ron,

  I looked up the history on the rps garage and it looks like there is a segregation request and implemented that separated the elevatorsand ramps from the garage so that the parking spaces could be easier to figure out the income taxes on etc. This would have been a commercial appraiser that made these changes and revalued assessments and so that would be a simple call to he assessor’ office and requesting the appraiser’s name.

  The property in nine mile, as far as I could find, without a for sure parcel number is in a current use program. Current use values are set by the DOR every year based on what the acreage is being used for. Examples, forest harvesting, crops etc. Usually, these per acre rates are a few dollars to a hundred dollars an acre compared with market use of land. Market use of land is when the land is used for buildings etc and does not bring any kind of crop or timber etc. Desiree was the current use specialist (as of a few months ago when I quit) in the Assessor’s office and is very nice. She could answer any specific details. She would be the one who sets that value. Hope this helps.

• 

  Ron_the_Cop on March 30 at 11:04 a.m.

  JJB,

  Thanks. I’ll pass your info along.

• 

  jjb on March 30 at 11:36 a.m.

  Ron,

  I would be open to any legal help or channels your group might offer in making all aspects of this office open to the public and transparent both in history and current. You can contact me directly at accountableassessors@hotmail.com and we can talk from there. Josh