by Jim Scarantino | Nov 21, 2020 | General, Politics
A group of Democrat legislators has urged Governor Inslee to reverse his recent order again closing restaurants and bars to indoor service. In a November 16, 2020 letter to the Governor they criticized his order for lacking a scientific justification and imposing needless hardship on 100,000 hospitality workers, who will join the 93,000 workers in that industry already without jobs.
The legislators point out that less than 1% of COVID cases have been traced to dining in restaurants. They also dispute the Governor’s other claims that he used to justify his order closing restaurants and bars until December 14.
The figure cited by the legislators may be far less than 1% over the last months as it likely includes cases from early in the pandemic before mitigation measures were widely adopted.
The Democrat legislators who signed the letter range from Senator Mark Mullett, who owns several restaurants and whose reelection Inslee opposd, to very liberal Senators Joe Nyuyen and Rebecca Saldana who are reliable Inslee allies.
The legislators representing the Olympic Peninsula, Senator Kevin Van De Wege, and Representatives Steve Tharinger and Michael Chapman, did not sign onto the letter. The latest unemployment figures from the Washington Employment Security Division for Jefferson, Clallam and Gray’s Harbor Counties are 7.8%, 8.4% and 10.0% respectively. Port Townsend’s economy is heavily dependent on the hospitality industry.
The Washington Hospitality Association and former Governor Christine Gregoire, now CEO of Challenge Seattle, sent their own letter to Inslee, raising similar points. This may the first time that Democrat leaders have disputed the Governor’s claims about COVID and pointed to conflicting medical evidence that undermines the way he is exercising his otherwise unchallenged and essentially dictatorial emergency powers.
To read the Democrats’ letter, simply click here.
Gregoire’s letter is at this link.
The Washington Hospitality Association letter is here.
[h/t Mynorthwest.com]
by Jim Scarantino | Nov 20, 2020 | General, Local Businesses
Promises to the State Auditor that an audit committee would provide enhanced financial oversight were broken. The Fort Worden Public Development Authority’s audit committee was not formally created until earlier this year, and it has rarely met. Even after revelations of irregularities and malfeasance that threaten the organization’s future, the audit committee has canceled its next scheduled meeting.
The Fort Worden PDA has never received a clean state audit. Every review by the State Auditor has found significant problems, ranging from misstating millions of dollars of debt as income to addition and subtraction errors. The response from the PDA has been that it would provide more training and resources to its financial team and that the PDA Board would form an audit committee to ensure that the problems were not repeated.
See Port Townsend Free Press, November 6, 2020, “Fort Worden PDA Finances Plagued with Problems from Beginning” [Photo above: the current condition of Ft. Worden’s $2 million glamping project]
The State Auditor in February 2017 released adverse findings in its audit of the PDA’s first two years of full operation, 2014 and 2015. There was no audit for 2016 yet because the PDA was over a year and a half behind in getting that year’s information information to the State Auditor.
In response to the adverse findings, the PDA pledged that it was “implementing procedures to ensure internal controls are put in place and adhere[d] to in order to address this finding….” The PDA stated that this action was “our priority.” Further, the PDA said that it “has also established an Audit Committee to oversee future annual reporting as an extra measure to make sure accurate reporting takes place.” The State Auditor recommended strongly that staff receive the training and resources needed to do their job of preparing accurate accounts. The PDA pledged this would be done.
Yet, in the Executive Committee meeting discussing the findings by the State Auditor there was no discussion of these pledges and no motion by any Board member nor suggestion by staff to act upon those pledges. Instead, the Board and staff quibbled with and reframed the Auditor’s negative audit to minimize its significance. The minutes of that February 23. 2017 Executive Committee meeting may be read at this link. Indeed, David Robison, the executive director at the time–who held the position for nine years until November 2020–saw the negative audit as a positive reflection on the job his staff was doing.
Dave Robison said that to put things into perspective it should be noted that for a startup organization with complicated finances and operations, to have received only one finding in our first state audit is highly encouraging.
By the time of this discussion, the PDA had been in existence for seven years.
A review of the Board’s meeting minutes for all of 2017 shows no other discussion of the adverse State Audit, nor any action to create the promised audit committee and provide the enhanced staff training and resources strongly recommended by the State Auditor.
The next two years passed without discussion or action by the PDA Board to prevent a repeat of the negative audits for 2014 and 2015. No audit committee was formed. There was no action on upgrading the skills and resources of PDA’s accounting staff.
In February 2020, the State Auditor released negative audits for PDA’s 2016 and 2017 financial statements. In addition to submitting its 2016 data late, the PDA also was six months late in getting its 2017 financials completed and delivered to the State Auditor. Again, the State Auditor could not give the PDA a clean audit. It found $3.5 million in debt that was not reported, mathematical errors, and operating expenses and liabilities misstated for both years, among other problems. “Internal controls over financial statement preparation,” the Auditor stated, “were inadequate to ensure accurate and complete reporting.” Again the Auditor recommended that the PDA’s staff receive the training needed to do their job right. Again, the PDA told the State Auditor that it was forming an audit committee. “The Committee,” the PDA wrote in its response to the Auditor’s findings, “will perform regular review of internal financial controls, process and policies.”
Finally, at its February 26, 2020 meeting the Board took up a motion to create the audit committee. In discussion of the motion, Treasurer Jeffery Jackson claimed that the Executive Committee “has historically served as an audit committee.” {A review of all the minutes of the meetings of the Executive Committee, however, does not show that body undertaking any of the actions normally undertaken by corporate audit committees. They reflect no oversight of financial reporting or internal controls nor participation in the preparations for the state audits.) The motion passed unanimously. An “Ad Hoc Audit and Finance Committee” was born.
It did not meet until April 16. Its first agenda item was a review of financial reports presented by staff. There was no discussion of improving the inadequate financial controls which had led to four previous adverse audits by the State Auditor. There was no discussion of staffing needs or training the PDA’s accounting team. The balance of the meeting was about operations, cash flow requirements and projections, and recovering from the Governor’s lock down order. There was a discussion towards the end about the Auditor’s position that the Fort Worden Foundation, a related charitable fundraising group, should be included in the PDA’s financial reports. That was it as far as it went in responding to any of the State Auditor’s concerns.
Two months went by without another meeting of the audit committee. At its June 18 meeting there was no discussion of anything related to the problems identified by the State Auditor. All discussion was focused on budget scenarios, cash flow and the impact of the Governor’s COVID lock down orders.
The July meeting of the audit committee was canceled.
The August meeting of the audit committee was canceled.
No meeting was scheduled for September.
The October meeting was canceled.
On October 28, 2020 Acting Executive Director David Timmons reported alarming discoveries in the PDA’s financial picture. He found irregularities, malfeasance and other problems so severe they rendered the PDA’s finances “a house of cards.” Board members responded with surprise and concern. One Board member said she was “stunned.” See Port Townsend Free Press’s 11/5/20 report.
Despite the PDA’s precarious situation, the Ad Hoc Audit and Financial Committee has canceled its November meeting. No meeting for December is currently scheduled.
Related: “Fort Worden Glamping a Soggy Mess,” PTFP, 11/14/20
by Jim Scarantino | Nov 16, 2020 | Politics
The findings of watchdog group Judicial Watch can be confirmed. They reported that Jefferson County was one of 353 counties across the nation with more registered than eligible voters. With their data in hand and having received a lengthy statement from Jefferson County Auditor Rose Ann Carroll, I can say that the Judicial Watch findings are substantially correct.
Judicial Watch’s voter information came from the Washington Secretary of State’s data. Judicial Watch obtained its number of eligible voters from the 2018 American Community Survey (ACS). ACS surveys are sent to 3.5 million households each month, and, according to Judicial Watch “are considered to be the most reliable estimates outside the decennial census.” The U.S. Census Bureau describes the ACS as “the premiere source for detailed population and housing information about our nation.” The 2018 survey was the culmination of five years of data collection and is the most recently reported ACS survey.
Judicial Watch found that Jefferson County had a total of 29,221 registered voters compared to 26,308 eligible voters resulting in having 11.107% more registered votes on its rolls than people of voting age.
I calculated slightly different numbers. The 2018 ACS I was able to locate reported that Jefferson County had a population of 30,856, with 3,926 under the age of 18. That results in an eligible voting population of 26,930. However you cut it, Jefferson County, has more registered than eligible voters.
Auditor Carroll provided me with the county’s latest numbers which show a total of 30,107 registered voters, again more than the number of eligible voters.
But Jefferson County has grown since the end of 2018, one might say. Could that explain away the problem?
The answer is “no.” The Census Bureau does put out other estimates of population data that are not as reliable as the five-year collection of data in the ACS. Its 2019 Vintage Estimate pegs Jefferson County’s population at 32,221, an increase of 1,365 or an annual increase of 4.4%. One could quibble with that estimate: where did those 1,365 new people find housing in a county with a vacancy rate of 0% that is producing very, very few new housing units? We don’t have that many babies, and our sizable old population means a larger percentage of the population than average dies each year.
Even accepting data that the Census Bureau does not promote as superior to the ACS data, we still have more registered than eligible voters. The 2019 Vintage Estimate figures indicate 3,802 persons under age 18, resulting in an eligible voting population of 28,419, once again substantially below the registered voter total reported by Auditor Carroll.
So what’s going on?
First off, this does not indicate a huge voter fraud problem, but rather one that exposes Jefferson County to litigation to force it to clean up its voter rolls and close the door on the potential for voting misconduct.
Judicial Watch’s nationwide study showed “1.8 million excess, or ‘ghost’ voters in 353 counties across 29 states,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The data highlights the recklessness of mailing blindly ballots and ballot applications to voter registration lists. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections.”
Judicial Watch has successfully sued a number of governmental entities for violating the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by carrying large numbers of inactive voters on their rolls–what Judicial Watch calls “ghost voters.’
In Jefferson County we have more registered than eligible voters because our rolls are carrying 2,266 inactive voters. According to the Secretary of State of Washington, “If an election-related piece of mail is returned by the post office as undeliverable to the voter at that address, the registration is placed on ‘inactive’ status. A voter who is on inactive status may return to active status at any time by updating his or her address, requesting a ballot, or submitting a new voter registration application.”
But our active voter roll also includes people who receive ballots though they should not be voting here. We have reported several instances of people in Texas and Arizona getting Jefferson County ballots, and a woman in Jefferson County receiving a ballot for her daughter who moved to Texas years ago. One reason is, as we reported here, that the Auditor has selected a mail forwarding option with the USPS that results in the ballot following someone to addresses outside the county instead of being returned when it cannot be delivered to their previous Jefferson County address. There is an option that would prevent this from happening, but it is not the one selected by the Auditor.
While it is illegal for these people to vote in a Jefferson County election, there is nothing to stop them and little chance they would be caught. There is no national registry that would automatically catch people voting in different states, and it does happen. Instead of an enforcement mechanism to prevent such voter fraud, we have an honor system. A Pew Study in 2012 found that 2.75 million people were registered to vote in more than one state, and as many as 70,000 in three or more states. As Carroll explained in her email to us, it is up to the voter to take their name off our rolls when they move away. “A change of address via the United States Postal Service,” Carroll explained, “doesn’t mean that one’s voter registration is automatically cancelled and reassigned.”
In an attempt to catch people voting in different states, Washington and 29 other states are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). “ERIC members regularly exchange information about registered voters with member states comparing election information to detect double voters,” says Carroll.
What is Carroll’s response to the findings of Judicial Watch that Jefferson County has more registered than eligible voters (which I have confirmed)? “VoteWA is Washington State’s registration system. The VoteWA system is secured by highly skilled Office of the Secretary of State IT staff and Security Operations Center, using state of the art equipment and following IT industry best practices. All 39 counties use VoteWA.”
That is true, but it doesn’t contradict the findings by Judicial Watch. Thirteen other Washington counties share our problem. This is the very sort of failure at cleaning up voting rolls that keeps Judicial Watch lawyers busy.
Auditor Carroll spent a good deal of time composing her statement. It provides a good primer on many aspects of Washington’s voting laws and practices. It is the policy of the Port Townsend Free Press to publish in full all written responses to our written inquires. Accordingly, here it is:
Basic Information About Ballot Counting and Signature Checking of Every Ballot
Washington’s system of voting is in Chapter 29A.40 RCW. RCW 29A.40.010 states: “Each active registered voter shall continue to receive a ballot by mail until the death or disqualification of the voter, cancellation of the voter’s registration, or placing the voter on inactive status.” The County sends ballots to voters with a return envelope. RCW 29A.40.091(1). The return envelope contains a statement that the voter must sign under penalty of perjury “that it is illegal to vote if he or she is not a United States citizen; it is illegal to vote if he or she has been convicted of a felony and has not had his or her voting rights restored; and it is illegal to cast a ballot or sign a ballot declaration on behalf of another voter.” RCW 29A.40.091(2). All received return envelopes must be placed in secure locations from the time of delivery to the county auditor until their subsequent opening. RCW 29A.40.110(1).
RCW 29A.40.110 requires that all signatures on return envelops must be verified against registration records. All personnel assigned to verify signatures must receive training on statewide standards for signature verification. Personnel must verify that the voter’s signature on the ballot declaration is the same as the signature of that voter in the registration files of the county. Election observers appointed by the major political parties are present during the processing of the ballots at the County counting center. RCW 29A.40.100.
Jefferson County follows the required process completely and faithfully.
Basic Information about the Security of the Tabulation Systems Used in Washington
Washington employs paper-based systems, including voter verifiable paper audit trails, independent testing, pre- and post-election audits, and physical security of tabulation equipment.
Before a tabulation system can be used in Washington, the state requires testing at a federally approved independent testing lab. These expert testers include security reviews as a part of their overall testing efforts.
Then, systems are tested at the state level and reviewed by Washington’s voting systems certification board, comprised of technology experts, accessibility experts, and certified county election officials.
Counties must then perform acceptance testing and logic and accuracy testing prior to every election. The Washington Secretary of State’s office conducts post-election audits, where they draw precincts and races at random and compare the vote totals from the tabulator to a hand count of ballots before the election is certified.
How can voter move out of Washington State & receive a ballot to vote in Jefferson County?
Voting twice in any election is a felony. Thirty states including Washington are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). ERIC members regularly exchange information about registered voters with member states comparing election information to detect double voters.
The United States doesn’t have a universal registration system. Rather, each state has their own voter registration system and data. When voters move from one state to another, they have an obligation to cancel their registration and re-enroll at their new address. We work hard to convey this at every opportunity. This is true wherever you live, regardless of polling place or Vote-By-Mail. If you are registered to vote in Arizona and then move to Oregon, your name will remain in the poll books in Arizona until you notify the registrar that you have moved to Oregon. And since Arizona allows absentee voting, you could certainly receive a mailed Arizona ballot while you are in Oregon.
If someone is an active voter in Washington State even if they have been temporarily assigned to a new work location, gone away to college or seasonally go to a warmer climate for the Winter they are still eligible to receive a ballot. We would hate to see them miss an election since they took the time to register to vote in Washington State.
If someone no longer wishes to be a Washington State voter. The voter must terminate their registration by notifying us by written notification which must include their signature. A change of address via the United States Postal Service doesn’t mean that one’s voter registration is automatically cancelled and reassigned.
Anyone who is registered to vote in one state and moves to another state has an obligation to do the responsible thing and update their voter registration with the state they moved from and the state they moved to.
Judicial Watch claim of having more registered voters than eligible voters in Jefferson County.
VoteWA is Washington State’s registration system. The VoteWA system is secured by highly skilled Office of the Secretary of State IT staff and Security Operations Center, using state of the art equipment and following IT industry best practices. All 39 counties use VoteWA. Jefferson County has the ability to run a report that will give us the following information as of the last update done at the State level.
County Jefferson
Active Voter is fully qualified to vote. (Receives a Ballot)
Inactive Notification received from USPS that election mail sent to the voter was undeliverable or the voter moved out of the county. (Does not receive a Ballot)
Pending Record is processing or an issue must be resolved. (Does not receive a Ballot)
Active + Inactive + Pending = Total Registered Voters
by Jim Scarantino | Nov 14, 2020 | General
Someone left the cake out in the rain.
Fort Worden’s $2 million glamping project is a soggy mess. I walked the hillside where the glamping project was supposed to have 19 luxury tents completed by June. The clouds were spitting rain and the wind cut like a knife. I counted only 16 sites under construction. Only one luxo-tent is completed. That is the model home for the development, so to speak. The rest are in various states of being somewhat done to just started.
I saw no evidence of the “event center” that was going to anchor the development. From what I can tell from public documents, the fancifully labelled “event center” was to be just a large mess tent.
16 tents for $2 million.
The platforms were sited to utilize extant sewer and water lines from the days when the military housed personnel on this hillside. The lines were fixed and upgraded. Electricity was run to each tent platform The rest is canvas and rope, lumber, plywood, nails, screws and PVC.
Those are indeed luxury tents: $125,000 each. That kind of money could have rehabbed quite a few rooms in Fort Worden’s existing inventory of buildings. It could have bought super-attractive tiny homes from GreenPods on Sims Way that could be rented as cabins year-round. These tents on that blustery, chilly hillside would be unheated and available for rent only during our summer months.
The project is deteriorating without bringing in any income. The tents last only ten years. For those few bundles of canvas that have been spread over frames, they will have one winter less in their life-span before they see their first glamper sipping Chablis and snacking on Brie and crackers.
It is doubtful this project will ever see completion. Acting PDA Manager David Timmons has discovered that $600,000 of the $2 million loaned by Kitsap Bank specifically for the project was diverted to other uses without Board approval.
I wrote that Fort Worden has been hit by the Cherry Street Project Disease. Examine the photos below. Similar causes, I wrote. Similar symptoms, too.
Delayed From the Start
A review of the minutes of the Fort Worden PDA Board of Directors shows that the glamping project fell behind even in the conceptual stage, which began in 2015. Three years later it got a Power Point presentation in February 2018. It was originally supposed to have a “soft open” in March 2020. That was critical to its financial viability. Then it was to be June, and there was talk of August. Now it’s opening date is no longer even under consideration.
By way of comparison, during the 4-5 years the Fort Worden PDA has been talking about and stumbling forward building some tent platforms, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe started and finished its multi-story hotel at its Blyn casino.
Governor Inslee’s lock down order stopped construction temporarily in mid-March, although government projects that provided housing were permitted to move forward. The PDA, curiously, did not try to shoehorn its project into this exemption. (A swimming pool in Port Angeles used the fact that it had a room for day care to continue construction as a government housing project.) Then, when a couple months later the Governor allowed construction across the board to resume, the PDA didn’t have the money it had borrowed for the project. In violation of the terms of its bond from Kitsap Bank, the PDA had diverted those funds elsewhere.
So the project sits empty, stalled out in cold, winter rains with water pooling on plywood platforms. It’s sharing that exposed, weathered plywood look with the Cherry Street Project.
The PDA’s loan to Kitsap Bank is due the first quarter of 2021. The PDA doesn’t have the money to pay what it owes. Kitsap Bank reportedly financed the $2 million glamping loan internally, which means our local bank will also a take hit due to the PDA’s malfeasance. Like a bank that lends to broke nations, there does not seem to be any collateral that can pay off some of the bad debt loss. And its not just that the PDA has fallen short; it violated the terms of its loan by spending the funds on things besides the project for which the loan was extended.
A Pipedream
Why did the PDA ever think that its costly glamping project made financial sense?
In a March interview with The Leader David Robison, PDA’s Executive Director for the past 9 years (but now retiring), said that Fort Worden’s glamping facility would be just like the one where he had stayed in Friday Harbor up in the San Juan Islands. The glamping facility there is the Lakedale Resort at Three Lakes.
Robison said that the PDA’s glamping tents would be almost exactly the same as these. I was able to peek inside the model tent (The vent was open. I zipped and snapped it shut after my look-see.) The single finished model does appear roughly similar to the Lakedale resort tents, but not as elaborately decorated.
The major difference is the surroundings. The Fort Worden setting is not comparable to Lakedale’s lakeside isolation. The PDA’s glamping sites, for which they had hoped to charge from about $170 to over $220 a night, are squeezed behind old Army buildings along black top roadways.
None of the tents pictured are finished. Their platforms are incomplete. In some, utilities are not connected and all are unfinished inside–just bare plywood for flooring, wires hanging from rafters, etc. (You can see some of this through windows that have been left open. I did not step inside any tents.) You could say that the few with canvas are just hiding all the work that’s been left undone.
As for the $125,000 luxo-tents in the trees (“incredibly luxurious,” Robison claimed), this is what they look like now.
But the Guard Shack is done–Or what’s with the Peninsula Daily News?
The Leader ran with a large front-page story about the financial crisis at Fort Worden. The widely read Jefferson County Facebook page, the on-line news outlet of Patrick Sullivan, former Leader editor, and Joe D’Amico of Security Services Northwest, provided expanded coverage on the crisis. The Port Townsend Free Press has run two stories about the impending collapse of the PDA’s house of cards and its years of dodgy finances (here and here). Not a word from the Peninsula Daily News. This is kind of, like, you know, a pretty big deal. The Fort Worden PDA is a pillar of Port Townsend’s creative community, it houses Centrum’s festivals, and it is one of the county’s largest employers with 170 on its payroll.
Two weeks after the alarming news broke, the PDN finally had news on Fort Worden. This was a front-page story!
(Photo, Zach Jablonski, Peninsula Daily News)
The old guard shack has been restored.
[It was pointed out to us since publication of this article that the PDN did have a story on the financial malfeasance at Fort Worden. But the information about the improper shifting of funds, credit card abuses and defalcations was buried deep into the article, and it took the PDN a full two weeks to acknowledge the crisis. And, to be clear, the guard house restoration was a project of the Friends of Fort Worden, which has been untainted by the financial scandals of the PDA.]
In closing, for your listening pleasure and reflection, here’s Richard Harris’s iconic ballad about how it feels when reality sets in and can no longer be avoided.
by Jim Scarantino | Nov 10, 2020 | General
Thanksgiving will not be stopped by COVID. The Tri-Area Community Meals Team will have hot meals available for pickup. Count on the same wonderful turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce and roll they been serving up every year to people wanting a little community on this holiday. Instead of a busy dining room inside, they will be handing out the meals from tents erected outside the Tri-Area Community Center. Reservations are required.
They will be serving from noon until 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving day. Deliveries are available for the homebound or those without transportation.
“We won’t need as many volunteers as in the past since we won’t be serving food or cleaning tables, etc.,” says Rita Hubbard, one of the organizers. “We’ll need volunteers on Wednesday late afternoon/evening to peel and cut potatoes, open cans of sauce, package cookies, etc. Thursday will be for serving only. Food handlers cards are not required but would be appreciated – those of us in the kitchen have cards.”
To make a reservation to pick up a Thanksgiving meal, or to arrange delivery, call 360-379-4228. Follow the recorded instructions, leave a message and the Tri-Area Community Meals Team will call back to confirm details.
Sponsors of this year’s Thanksgiving meal include First Security Bank, Jefferson Healthcare, OlyCap, GBF (“God Bless Food”) Catering, Hadlock Building Supply, and the East Jefferson Rotary Club.
“I found out we have 30 residents at the homeless shelter at the American Legion,” says Hubbard, “and was told there are at least 70 people in tents and cars at the fairgrounds – this includes children. I’m not sure yet how we’re going to get food out there – if it’s requested – but we’re working on it.”
More details and contact information is available at the group’s Facebook page, linked here.
My wife and I are hoping to again join in as volunteers. We will terribly miss that bustling dining room and music from Chicago Bob and friend. Here’s our story from last year. And here is the flyer for this year:
