$55,800 Whitewash? (III)

My apologies. I was wrong when I called the "independent investigation" into King County's absentee ballot problems by law firm Williams, Kastner and Gibbs at a cost of $55,800 to county taxpayers a "whitewash". It was, in fact, an under-the-table $55,800 donation of public funds to Ron Sims re-election campaign. Never could I have imagined such an appalling farce of an "independent investigation", paid for with public funds, and designed to scapegoat a lower-level employee in order to protect the Big Boss and his favored senior managers.

The complete report is here. [2.9MB PDF, 29 pages] This was not any kind of "investigation report". It was the work product of a pair of employment lawyers who were hired specifically to justify the predetermined action of firing Nicole Way, while making excuses for Bill Huennekens, Garth Fell and most of all, Dean Logan.

Read the complete report as well as Dean Logan's letter of proposed termination to Nicole Way and Logan's letter of proposed two-week suspension to Garth Fell and you'll see what I mean. For highlights, read the extended entry --

Specifically, look at the excuses and unfounded subjective judgments that are made to protect Bill Huennekens and Garth Fell:
p. 10:

In May 2004, Bill Huennekens, then Superintendent of Elections, directed that the practice of having observers bundle outer envelopes could no longer continue. Mr. Huennekens correctly reasoned that political party observers should not be active participants in the process since the process is supposed to be a neutral, non-partisan process

[I reported this back in April]. So, Huennekens ended a longstanding practice to have experienced people from both major parties perform a check, which did in fact cause problems, and this is correct reasoning?

p.17: It acknowledges that Huennekens received an email from Travis Elsom indicating that there were 735 NSOF ballots "well prior" to reporting to the canvassing board on on December 13 that there were only 560 NSOF ballots. The report doesn't give the date of the email. It came out during discovery for the trial that Elsom sent an email to Huennekens in response to Huennekens request on November 3. The excuse made in a footnote to the report for Huennekens' failure to track this issue:

In this age of instant communication, it is difficult to stay on top of all emails that are received

p. 17-18: Huennekens ignored warnings from Carlos Webb that he didn't pull all of the uncounted NSOF ballots. The excuse was that he normally relied on Garth Fell, who he found to be more reliable and accurate than Webb. Fell was excused for missing the uncounted NSOF ballots, because he had "been recently appointed to his position and having limited experience in his role, lacked sufficient experience to appreciate the magnitude and significance of the problem". The report does not question the genius of appointing Fell to be assistant superintendent when he was clearly out of his league.

So even though we see that Huennekens failed to heed the warnings of assistant superintendent Webb and ignored information that was given to him in writing at his request, this is considered justified. The standard is much higher for Nicole Way. p. 12:

With the creation of the Spreadsheet, it was the expectation of both Messrs. Fell and Huennekens that the information in the Spreadsheet be reviewed on a regular basis during the tabulation process. Although the directive was not in writing, there is no question that Ms. Way was aware of this expectation

I find no mention of the fact that Messrs. Fell and Huennekens failed to follow up to ensure that this was done.

p. 22, Regarding the falsified mail ballot report:

both Ms. Way and Mr. Fell did report to Mr. Huennekens that they intended to employ the methodology that they in fact used. The undersigned also believe that given the number of voters in the election and the responsibilities of Mr. Huennekens in the election, it is likely that Mr. Huennekens did not fully grasp the information that was being provided to him when it was provided.

Finally, there is this gratuitous pat on the back for Dean Logan, who is barely mentioned in the report and escapes totally scott-free for his failure to manage his subordinates:

It should also be noted that during the course of this investigation, the undersigned found that those who expressed opinions were generally supportive of Mr. Logan's management and leadership of hte REALS Division. In particular, they felt he had an open door and was attentive to issues raised in the Division

Of course, this farce of an investigation was conducted by a law firm that was representing Ron Sims and Dean Logan. Who's going to make any negative comments about the boss in such a setting?

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 01, 2005 11:00 AM | Email This