Ex-Trooper Fights Rv Tab Case Controversy Highlights Efforts To Avoid High Fees

On a tip from her boss, on a day off she’d planned to spend with her kids, Detective Tracy Hansen gathered binoculars and camera and slipped through an alfalfa field to spy on a motor home.

It was June 1998, and this was a break. A Country Coach RV she’d tracked for months was docked near a barn on a 15-acre Spokane ranch - land owned by a Washington State Patrol trooper. A colleague.

Hansen dialed the camera to highlight the evidence she sought: the motor home’s Oregon license plate.

She started snapping.

Retired WSP trooper Pete Powell had bought the RV 13 months earlier. He’d sold his Spokane home, unloaded his furniture, dumped a pair of land holdings.

He licensed the coach in Oregon, which has no sales tax, and where motor home tags cost about $125 a year. Then he hit the highway.

“From then on, wherever the wheels were turning is where I was from,” Powell said. “End of story.”

Not quite.

What Powell viewed as smart shopping, Hansen and the state viewed as tax evasion - an attempt to avoid $17,545 in Washington vehicle taxes.

So Hansen investigated Powell.

For the next 18 months, the two waged a cat-and-mouse war that fractured Spokane’s WSP office and underscored the difficulty of heeding and enforcing the license fee system.

Their battle prompted troopers to threaten each other, sparked internal affairs investigations and led to a reprimand of two patrolmen.

Although WSP brass forbid all but a department spokesman from talking, the story is detailed in internal affairs reports obtained by The Spokesman-Review.

Hansen, who once served as the governor’s bodyguard, so feared nosey cops would rifle through her case she locked notes in her patrol car and hid documents in files code-named for her cat.

But it wasn’t much of a secret.

“I had troopers knocking down my door all the time wanting to know what was going on,” said Hansen’s boss, Sgt. Rich Wiley, according to internal affairs documents. “This isn’t the way you want a case to go.”

Even Powell, an ex-trooper turned civic activist, had known of the investigation from the start. And he was so sure it was a vendetta brought by old adversaries that his attorney accused the state of intimidating witnesses.

While the circumstances are unusual, the case is part of a growing trend: Washington vehicle taxes and fees are the Northwest’s highest, and consumers are going to ever-greater lengths to avoid them. In response, authorities are throwing more resources at investigating fraud.

All this comes as voters consider a ballot initiative to ratchet down the state’s unpopular license fees.

Officials estimate 100,000 vehicles that should be licensed in Washington aren’t. Scofflaws siphon $21 million a year by going out of state. Last year, WSP caught 8,892 people with out-of-state tags, 589 after full-scale investigations.

Fraud is so common it’s spawned a cottage industry of scams in neighboring states, from illegitimate mailforwarding businesses to auto dealers who get handsome commissions for letting customers use their home addresses.

Washingtonians have been nabbed with vehicles proclaiming everything from “Famous Potatoes” to “Big Sky Country.” But the most common nonlocal plates are from Oregon.

The reason is simple. Licensing a $30,000 vehicle can run $3,200 in Washington. It costs half that in Idaho. In Oregon, it’s $33. For a $150,000 motor home, the difference can run $15,000.

Washington fees are higher in part because Oregon and Idaho collect income taxes. Washington doesn’t.

Officials admit fraud investigations can take more time than they’re worth and drivers may get mixed signals from neighboring states.

Critics, meanwhile, contend Washington has so much power officials can collect from legitimate nonresidents.

“It’s a stacked system - a trap for the unwary,” said Gregory Staeheli, Powell’s attorney. “The way the law is written right now they can nail just about anybody.”

In early 1997, Powell - unmarried, five years retired and barely in his 50s - percolated with plans. He’d discover the Alamo, watch sunsets over the Grand Canyon, drink a beer at Lake Havasu. He’d live on the road for two solid years, maybe three.

Since he was leaving town anyway, he said, he made arrangements.

Before purchasing the Coach, he leased an RV pad in Bend, Ore. He drove to Umatilla to get an Oregon driver’s license. He signed up for an Oregon voter’s card. He returned to Spokane and on May 9, 1997, made his first RV payment with an Oregon Wells Fargo starter check.

Over the next two years Powell visited Death Valley, Mojave National Preserve, Joshua Tree National Park. He camped with 300,000 other RVers in Arizona. He toppled a four-wheeler joy-riding on sand dunes near San Diego.

“There’s lots of full-time motorhomers out there tooling around with Oregon plates because it’s cheap,” Powell said.

Consider: Oregon has one motor home registered for every 47 people - nearly twice the number per capita as Washington.

Oregon officials wish it wasn’t so, but they’re ill-equipped to stop the practice. Oregon law requires licensees be “residents,” but doesn’t adequately define the term.

“It’s kind of a touchy situation,” said Lana Tribbey, with Oregon’s Department of Motor Vehicles in Salem. “It’s just not clear.”

In Washington, residency criteria are strict. Possessing a hunting license or concealed weapon permit is enough to require in-state tags. Authorities also may look to club memberships or mechanics’ records.

In fact, even if Oregon considers someone a resident, Washington can still require that person to license a vehicle here.

“Nothing says you can be subject to taxes in only one state,” said Randy Littlefield, with Washington’s Revenue Department.

Guidelines are strict because drivers are creative, he said.

“We’ve watched people with Oregon plates drop their kids off at a Washington school or pull up to collect food stamps in Washington,” Littlefield said.

And most of their tips come from other residents.

“Nothing makes people madder than to pay their fair share and then have their neighbor brag about not paying it,” said Revenue Department spokesman Mike Gowrylow.

Not surprisingly, whenever Powell surfaced in Spokane, his Oregon plates were noticed.

Within a month of his purchase, a WSP colleague tipped off Hansen, a fraud investigator, who told her boss. He agreed she should check it out.

“I didn’t feel he should be treated any differently,” she later told investigators.

Beginning in October 1997, Hansen ran Powell’s name through databanks. She discovered his Oregon driver’s license had two mailing addresses - one in Washington. She photographed his name on the mailbox of the Spokane apartment he’d shared with his girlfriend. She photographed Powell’s Jeep, also with Oregon plates, parked in an apartment complex “tenants” section.

She learned he’d cast a ballot on the June 1997 Seahawks stadium issue. She phoned tenants of the Bend RV pad who hadn’t seen Powell in months. She photographed the Coach parked on land owned by WSP Trooper Mike Wunsch, a friend of Powell’s.

In late summer 1998, after nearly a year, she gave the file to the Department of Revenue. Its conclusion: Powell owed the state back taxes and fees.

Powell immediately appealed.

“I was picking up my brother, getting my girlfriend, getting work done on my vehicle - as is my constitutional right,” he said. “I was never in Spokane for more than two weeks at a time.”

His mail went to his girlfriend because he was on the road, he said. The Jeep was parked in his brother’s apartment stall when he visited. He got a stadium ballot in the mail and returned it out of habit.

Some details in Hansen’s report were wrong, Powell complained. People who knew he no longer lived in Washington weren’t interviewed. Other explanations were ignored, Powell believed. Since the case would be decided by a mere “preponderance” of evidence - 51 percent - each fact mattered.

Convinced Hansen’s investigation was revenge for past disagreements, Powell wrote to the governor, to legislators, to WSP’s chief. He demanded an investigation of the investigation. Little happened.

To Hansen, Powell was making a fuss to cover his misdeeds. She’d had past run-ins with Powell, but gave them little thought.

“What Pete doesn’t realize is … I haven’t wasted two seconds’ worth of my energy or time … feeling anything toward Pete,” Hansen told investigators. “It just seems like anything dealing with Pete Powell snowballs.”

From its outset, the case was hard to control. Troopers picked sides.

Once, a trooper asked Hansen who’d win in her battle with Powell. She said: “I’d put my money on me.” It quickly got back to Powell.

When Powell sent an office mate a postcard from Oregon, Hansen believed it was orchestrated to boost Powell’s position. Powell complained it wasn’t put in her case file.

When Hansen’s boss considered seeking voter-fraud charges against Powell for his stadium vote, Spokane’s WSP commander, Capt. Mike Dubee, objected because it would fuel Powell’s belief he was being picked on. Later, WSP investigators interviewed Dubee, concerned he was interfering on Powell’s behalf.

When troopers Wunsch and Sgt. Lee Boling wrote letters supporting Powell - Wunsch claiming the motor home was rarely on his land; Boling suggesting Powell was mistreated - both became subjects of internal probes. They were reprimanded for violating WSP policy.

WSP managers, including agency spokesman Capt. Eric Robertson, remain resolute. The investigation was fair. Hansen had done a thorough job. She refused to cave under pressure from fellow troopers.

The hubbub, Hansen told investigators, was the good-ol’-boy network in action: “I think it goes back to a cop doesn’t do a cop. I’ve broken the rule.”

Powell’s appeal is still pending. He’s abandoned life on the road, and is living in Southern California, not sure if he’ll be there for good.

Two years after its purchase, the source of his trouble - not the trouble itself - is gone. The Coach has been sold.

Despite everything, “I had tears in my eyes watching it roll away,” Powell said.

CONDITIONS REQUIRING WASHINGTON PLATES Any one of the following conditions requires a person to obtain washington vehicle plates: Washington voter; Washington driver’s license, professional license, hunting/fishing license, concealed weapon permit; Washington public assistance, welfare or food stamp benefits; Children in Washington public schools; Living six months a year in Washington; Business vehicles belonging to a Washington business or branch of a business located in Washington; A rented, borrowed or leased vehicle operated more than 10 days in Washington. In addition, when former Washington residents claim an out-of-state tax exemption, the burden of proof rests on them. To overcome the presumption of residency, they must show clear and convincing evidence. The state may consider the following factors: Location of bank accounts; Address used to obtain financing or insurance; Location of personal physician, attorney or accountant; Place of employment; Club memberships; Address used to receive mail; Location of personal storage items; Location of safe deposit boxes. Beginning last month, failing to register a motor vehicle in Washington no longer carries criminal penalties. But in addition to requiring back taxes and fees be repaid with interest, the state can assess a penalty of up to $10,000. In an effort to crack down on fraud, the state also is forming a new special task force to investigate suspected violations. Source: Washington State Patrol and Department of Revenue