County Engineer Disciplined Official Failed To Heed Warnings In Bigelow Gulch Road Fiasco

Spokane County has suspended its chief engineer who oversaw a botched road job expected to cost taxpayers $300,000 in legal claims.

Engineer Bill Johns was sent home for two weeks without pay because he ignored warnings that the July repaving of Bigelow Gulch Road might scar motorists’ vehicles.

Since then, 747 drivers have filed legal claims against the county, claiming their cars were damaged by crushed rock and hot tar.

The county already has paid out more than $200,000 and has yet to review roughly half the claims.

“It was my opinion there were adequate opportunities to react and significantly reduce the number of claims,” said Public Works Director Dennis Scott.

Attempts to reach Johns were unsuccessful Wednesday.

While Johns did not violate any county policy, Scott said his errors in judgment were severe.

At issue was a one-day project to lay hot oil and crushed gravel on a 3.2-mile stretch of road.

Hundreds of drivers traveling that route were sprayed with sticky tar that can damage car and truck exteriors and is expensive and difficult to remove.

The first problem, Scott said, is that Johns allowed people to travel on the road while it was being worked on.

Johns should have known better than not to detour traffic on a road traveled by 16,000 vehicles a day, Scott said.

More importantly, Scott said, Johns should have listened when the county’s legal-claims manager told the road crew to expect problems.

“Early on, my advice was that we close that road,” said Claude Cox, the county’s risk manager. “I’d rather inconvenience people than damage people.”

Cox said he raised questions before the project was begun.

By 10 a.m. on construction day, Scott said, Johns was warned again that nearly a dozen claims already had been filed.

Cox said the road is so narrow and heavily traveled that road work poses “undue risk under the best of circumstances.”

And that day did not constitute the best of circumstances.

The hot oil used when “chip sealing” must first cool for it to hold the rock that is placed on top of it. But it was 100 degrees that day, so the sticky goo never gelled.

“There was an opportunity to say this was a unique job and needed to be handled differently,” Scott said.

“When you take a job that should have cost us no more than $30,000, but we’re going to end up with $300,000 in claims” that justifies the punishment, he said.

The county is self-insured, so taxpayers will foot the entire bill, Cox said.

The suspension will cost Johns roughly $3,000 in lost wages.

Johns was promoted to the $73,000-a-year job in 1995, after Engineer Ron Hormann retired rather than accept a forced demotion.

Johns, a Republican activist who had contributed $325 to Commissioner Phil Harris’ 1994 campaign, was appointed on Scott’s recommendation - even though he was below several senior managers in rank and seniority.

The year before, Hormann had been appointed Washington state’s “county engineer of the year.”