Origin, Cost Of Auditor’s Letter Probed No Action Taken After Hearing On Mailing Critical Of Whitman County Commissioners
After a morning of occasionally heated testimony, the Whitman County commissioners got what they were looking for.
They now know it cost $174.72 for county Auditor Genie Goldsworthy to mail several hundred letters excoriating the commissioners for creating an allegedly “‘Big Time’ financial mess” of the county books.
The political cost - to both Goldsworthy and the commissioners - has yet to be tallied.
“The whole county doesn’t come out looking good at all,” commission chairman Les Wigen said after Monday’s hearing.
Indeed, the hearing raised a series of allegations of potential damage to more than just Goldsworthy.
Among them:
That the commissioners, by calling the hearing and issuing subpoenas to 10 auditor’s office employees, were creating a “kangaroo court.”
In a letter to the board, Goldsworthy’s attorney, John Cooper, said the board was trying to discredit the auditor and harass her staff. Goldsworthy released the letter Monday as her sole comment on the day’s proceedings.
That Goldsworthy is not the only official inappropriately using county postage.
“I wish the public could hear the whole story of the revolving account, because there was other postage in there taken by other departments,” said Dolores “Dee” Luft, who handles the claims paid from the account to the auditor’s office.
The board has also yet to fully reckon with the damage created by Goldsworthy’s July 16 letter. The four-page tract claimed the county books have yet to be balanced and that the board is usurping Goldsworthy’s duties by keeping them from her.
The letter went to county commissioners, auditors and prosecutors in all other Washington counties, as well as to all of Whitman County’s mayors, school superintendents and junior taxing districts.
As recently as Friday, Goldsworthy was saying she ordered and edited the letter but did not write it.
On Monday, in telephone testimony from her attorney’s Spokane office, Barbara Langford said the letter was the end product of a 10-page, handwritten draft Goldsworthy dropped off at Langford’s Rosalia home on a Sunday morning. Langford, an auditor’s office employee, said Goldsworthy told her she would get four hours of comp time to type the letter.
Natalia Swenson, a part-time worker in the auditor’s office, told Chief Deputy Prosecutor Ron Shirley in a taped interview that Goldsworthy asked her to type subsequent drafts of the letter. Goldsworthy later approved a check to pay for the mailing’s postage, she said.
The commissioners took no action following the hearing. However, Shirley said he plans to recommend that the board bill Goldsworthy for the cost of her letter and Monday’s hearing and forward its findings to the state auditor for possible action.
, DataTimes