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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell retiring after a decade as Spokane County’s top legal representative

Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell announced Tuesday he is resigning next month, ending a decade overseeing the county’s most serious criminal cases in court.

Haskell told the Spokane County Commission at its legislative meeting that his resignation will take effect at the end of day July 18. Commissioners will need to appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of Haskell’s four-year term. He was elected to the position in 2014, re-elected in 2018 and again in 2022.

“Being elected to this office has been one of the greatest honors of my life,” Haskell said. “I put heart and soul in, and I know you all know that, but come a time when it’s time to let go.”

He joined the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office as a deputy prosecutor in 1998, shortly after graduating law school from Seattle University. He was elected county prosecutor in 2014.

Haskell previously served on the Airway Heights City Council and Cheney School Board.

The commissioners voted unanimously to appoint Chief Criminal Prosecuting Attorney Preston McCollam to serve as county prosecutor until they appoint a replacement who will serve until the winner of the seat in the 2026 election is certified.

The commissioners, however, did not provide the required two-week public notice and host a public comment period ahead of that vote. The commissioners will need to do so and vote to make the move official ahead of Haskell’s departure, a county spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

McCollam confirmed in an interview he intends to seek an appointment to serve the remainder of Haskell’s term, and intends to file as a candidate for the position in the 2026 election cycle. He joined the office shortly after Haskell arrived in 2015 and was named the head of the criminal side in 2023.

In an interview following the meeting, Haskell said he wanted to retire while he still has his health. He’d like to avoid any potential impacts to his responsibilities to the public, he said, making the comparison to a professional athlete who stays in the game even though their performance may be slipping.

“I want to be able to slow down before I stop; they say you get to actually look at the scenery a little bit,” Haskell said of his impending retirement. “This is a high-speed job, and there’s a lot of moving parts.”

Haskell said he gave the commissioners more than a month’s notice to try to ensure as smooth of a transition as possible.

Under state law, the party of the outgoing official is responsible for naming three candidates to replace Haskell, a registered Republican. The Spokane County GOP has 60 days to make nominations for the commission to vote on, the same process through which state Rep. Mike Volz was named acting Spokane County Treasurer after his predecessor, U.S. Rep. Mike Baumgartner, was elected to represent Washington’s 5th Congressional District last year.

Unlike the treasurer role, however, the prosecutor position will not appear on the November ballot this year. That’s because Haskell waited until after candidate filing week in early May to announce his retirement.

Chair Mary Kuney and her fellow members of the Spokane County Commission thanked Haskell for his “lifetime of public service,” which includes several years in the United States Air Force. Haskell said he enlisted “straight out of high school” in 1972 and spent his first four years as a military policeman “guarding airplanes and bombers.” He would later fly those machines before he left to get a college degree and then returned as a pilot and commissioned officer in 1979.

The Seattle transplant first landed in Spokane in the 1980s as a B-52 pilot stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base, and eventually became an instructor pilot before going on to earn his law degree from Seattle University in 1997. Haskell became a member of the Air National Guard post-graduation, and suspended his stint on the Airway Heights City Council and as a recently hired prosecuting attorney to serve another three years in active duty following the 9/11 attacks.

Whether it was his time in the military, or at the helm of the prosecutor’s office, Haskell said he has deeply valued being a public servant and has approached his life with a commitment to serve to the best of his ability.

“It’s been a very meaningful career, and put together with my life in the military, it’s very rewarding,” Haskell said. “I go into retirement very satisfied.”

Much of the controversy surrounding Haskell during his tenure stemmed from his wife’s social media activity. He faced calls for his resignation in 2022 and issued a formal apology following an Inlander report on the offensive and outspoken comments Lesley Haskell has made on social media, which include using the N-word to describe MSNBC host Joy Reid, who is Black, and using racial slurs for Chinese people, white people, Latinos, Jews and gay people. Lesley Haskell also described herself as a “proud white nationalist.”

McCollam said he always appreciated that Haskell was a hands-on prosecutor, which isn’t always the case elsewhere in the state or nationally. Haskell worked long hours almost daily, and the fellow prosecutors down the chain of command knew they could rely on him as a resource. Haskell would assist with grace, McCollam said.

“I always knew that if I called him in the middle of the night with a tough question or a legal question, that he was going to answer his phone and do his best to assist,” McCollam said. “I think that’s a sentiment that our law enforcement and the community really appreciated.”

Spokane County Commissioner Al French said he’s always admired Haskell’s commitment “to do the right thing,” a sentiment McCollam echoed.

“Every time I brought a problem or an issue to Larry, he never gave me a spin or politics,” McCollam said. “He just always wanted to get to, ‘What is the right thing to do here,’ even if it hurt him. He wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing for the community and for the county.”

Commissioner Amber Waldref noted Haskell was responsible for bringing in a wave of new talent to the prosecutor’s office following retirements by several long-term members, and thanked him for his efforts to improve compensation for those new employees to help the county stay competitive among public service attorney roles across the state.

Commissioner Chris Jordan, a fellow attorney, said the work done in the prosecutor’s office is important and challenging. The attorneys are managing large caseloads, dealing with difficult realities and it “doesn’t seem to get any easier,” he said.

“One of the first things you said was, ‘You know, when it comes to my legal advice and job as prosecutor, it’s about the law, not about politics,’ ” Jordan recalled of their first interactions since he joined the board in 2023. “I’ve just found the way that you arrange that team and provide that legal service to be professional, and I appreciate and respect that.”

Haskell said the kind remarks at the Tuesday meeting nearly brought a tear to his eye. He reiterated his commitment to fulfilling his duties, adding that he’ll be arriving to work early each morning and staying “as long as it’s needed” every day until July 19.

“I very much have enjoyed being the public servant I have been, and I recognize and I tell people, even to my employees today, ‘Our bosses are the people that live here,’ ” Haskell said. “ ‘They are the ones that we serve. It’s not about you, it’s not about me, it’s about them.’ I never let them forget that, and I certainly never forgot it myself.”