County fined $40K for withholding documents in Benton suit

Associated Press

VANCOUVER, Wash. – A Clark County Superior Court judge has fined the county $40,000 after ruling it withheld documents in a lawsuit being pursued by Don Benton, a former Republican state senator and county official.

Judge Gregory Gonzales also ruled on March 11 the county must provide him with a private screening of all the documents by March 17, the Columbian reported. The county then produced roughly 1,700 pages of documents.

Benton, former director of the now-defunct county Department of Environmental Services, filed the lawsuit, along with two other former employees, in 2016. It alleged, in part, Benton experienced hostility after resisting what he described as improper actions by then-manager Mark McCauley.

Benton was laid off in March 2016. He then took a job with the Trump administration. The county council terminated McCauley’s contract in 2017.

Lawyers had been grappling over the documents for years. A recent motion claimed the county falsely classified the documents.

The documents reveal correspondence between county officials and with the Columbian. Ted Buck, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said Tuesday the new information is “seminal” to the case.

“The county’s defense from the get-go has been that the termination of the three defendants was simply part of a departmental reorganization. The information that we have now discovered makes it clear that the county’s motivation was much different than that,” Buck said.

Megan Starks, an outside attorney for the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said Tuesday, “we have no statement regarding the pending case, except that the sanctions that were recently awarded will be paid by our law firm and will not be funded by the county or its taxpayers.”

Gonzales pushed back the trial’s start date to late April.