Utility Commissioners Cleared By State Back-Dating Paperwork To Get A Raise Wasn’T Criminal

Wed., April 12, 2000

By John Craig johnc@spokesman.com

Stevens County Public Utility District commissioners committed an oversight - not a crime - when they backdated a resolution to give themselves a raise, a special prosecutor said Tuesday.

State Assistant Attorney General Brian Moran declined to prosecute the commissioners for improprieties alleged in a 1998 state audit.

“There is no criminal intent that can be proved in this case,” Moran said in a letter to Stevens County Prosecutor Jerry Wetle.

Wetle had asked Moran, the state’s chief criminal prosecutor, to handle the case to avoid the appearance of a conflict. Wetle had worked with PUD Commissioner Ken Rosenberg when Rosenberg was a county commissioner.

Moran’s decision turned on handwritten notes from a December 1992 meeting. The notes, whose validity wasn’t disputed, supported the commissioners’ claim that they had approved the pay raise orally in time to qualify for it.

For all three commissioners to double their salaries from $200 to $400 a month in July 1997, the action had to have been approved in 1992. State law requires public officials to stand for election before collecting any raise they give themselves.

A clerk’s handwritten notes indicate the raise was approved in December 1992, but the action wasn’t recorded at the time. Auditors discovered the minutes had been altered several years later and a backdated resolution had been placed on file.

Auditors went on to find at least 11 other cases in which minutes had been altered. Commissioners said they made corrections, and Moran said state law allows public officials to amend minutes even years after a meeting.

“Informality does not necessarily equate with illegality,” Moran said.

Anyway, he said, no written resolution was required for the pay raise as long as it was approved orally.

Moran said he also considered the district’s clean financial record and the fact that the commissioners returned the $4,600 in disputed pay increases.

“I think Mr. Moran is correct that this is an oversight on our part and there was no criminal intent,” district manager Dick Price said. “We are working hard to correct the informalities pointed out in the audit report.”

Moran said he focused only on criminal issues and didn’t consider allegations that PUD officials had violated state public disclosure laws by resisting a critic’s efforts to obtain documents.

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