Franklin coroner candidates clash over work ethic and getting along with others

The two men vying for the Franklin County coroner’s position are locked in a bitter battle.

The fight between Franklin County Coroner Dan Blasdel and his challenger Curtis McGary has been marked with hostility, sometimes breaking into accusations in one of the closest races in Franklin County.

The two men were the only ones on the primary ballot in August. Blasdel won that by 107 votes.

The feud has attracted attention from around the state, with the local sheriff, prosecutor and police weighing in on one side and death investigators lining up on the other.

Both men have more than 25 years handling deaths. Blasdel has been coroner since the position was created in 1994. McGary has worked in funeral homes for more than 30 years, most recently as a funeral director at Mueller’s Funeral Home in Pasco.

The Franklin County Coroner’s Office ranks almost at the bottom of the county’s $32 million expense budget for 2018, just above courthouse security. It’s made up of the elected coroner, a full-time deputy and a couple of part-time employees.

Blasdel and his chief deputy handled most of the 214 deaths investigated in 2017, and reviewed all but 20 of the deaths in the county.

Contrasting experience

The work each of the candidates does and their education have become a central issue in the election.

Blasdel talked about starting his career as a death investigator after running a chimney sweep business. During one job, he heard an argument between a retired officer turned death investigator, and his wife, who was frustrated about the long hours the investigator was putting in.

Blasdel ended up with the job after talking with the former detective. He spent two years working for the prosecutor’s office, and when Franklin County became large enough to have its own coroner, Blasdel ran for the job and won.

He since has become a certified medicolegal death investigator, something Blasdel’s supporters say separates him from his opponent.

The American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators requires applicants, among other things, to work 640 hours in a coroner’s or medical examiner’s office.

And, Blasdel said, “There is a rigorous test.”

He has been active statewide, serving as the president of the Washington Association of County Officials and vice-president of the Washington Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners. In those roles, he has been part of shaping state policy, in particular getting the rules around inquests changed following the shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes.

McGary pointed to his own qualifications, saying that he learned how to identify the cause and manner of death while getting his mortuary science degree. He said those skills were refined by helping on multiple death scenes.

He said his work with the coroner’s office has given him experience in doing the job. Franklin County has an agreement with Mueller’s as one of two funeral homes to pick up bodies at death scenes. The work has sent McGary to various crime scenes where he’s worked with police.

He said it’s not strange for funeral directors to move into the position of coroner, also noting that in smaller counties such as Columbia and Adams, the prosecutor serves as the coroner.

“I hear my opponent say that he has certification, but you cannot get that until you’re in the office itself,” McGary said. “I’ve had over 5,000 hours of on-the-job training. Then over the years, I have stood next to the forensic pathologist.”

Doing the work

For as long as Blasdel has been Franklin County coroner, funeral homes have been in charge of picking up bodies. Until about five years ago, the work rotated.

That changed when the state agreed to allow counties to ask for bids from funeral homes for the service. At the time, Hillcrest Bruce Lee Memorial Center submitted the low bid, saying it would work for no charge, Blasdel said. As part of the agreement, the center agreed to let other funeral homes work off of their bid.

The agreement worked for the funeral homes, who get the chance to offer their services to families, and for the coroner’s office, which doesn’t have the equipment to transport bodies, Blasdel said. In many cases, families don’t want to move their loved ones to another home, so they’ll work with the home that already has the body.

McGary called the agreement a way for the coroner’s office to slide its responsibilities onto funeral homes, and he wants it stopped. He said the coroner’s office should be taking bodies from where they are found, rather than waiting for a funeral home to do the work.

“I need to be doing more of the work myself,” he said. “We’re going to maintain a chain of custody. I’m not going to have a third party doing work that’s going to break the chain of custody.”

Blasdel said unless the commissioners agree to add more money to his budget, it won’t happen.

The coroner’s budget has grown by $27,000 in the past four years; during that same same time, the county’s budget has increased by $5 million.

McGary contends he can make that happen by convincing the commissioners that deputies will work less because they won’t need to wait. At one fatal accident, he said, the deputy was there for two hours of overtime before a funeral home representative arrived.

Good relationships

McGary said he can offer the county the positive change needed to mend the rifts between the coroner’s office and law enforcement.

He said that while he went looking for some endorsements — like the Fraternal Order of Police Tri-Cities Lodge — others came to him. He’s gotten nods from local law enforcement including Sheriff Jim Raymond, former Undersheriff Dan McCary, and the Pasco Police Officers Association.

“They have seen my professionalism. They have seen my work ethic, and they said, ‘Yes. We want to see a change made,’ ” he said.

He criticized the coroner and his staff’s demeanor for creating this conflict, saying they overstep their authority at crime scenes.

Blasdel said the endorsements have more to do with his office pushing for an inquest into the 2015 shooting death of Zambrano-Montes by Pasco police. While the inquest found the officers were justified, the coroner said it left hard feelings behind.

His call to hold the hearing ended with a change in state law removing the the authority of coroners to issue warrants. Along way were disagreements between Blasdel and the county prosecutor and commissioners.

Blasdel said he wouldn’t change his decision to pursue the inquest. He said it was necessary to let a citizen jury decide whether the shooting was justified.

While neither Raymond nor Prosecutor Shawn Sant would explain more about why they endorsed McGary, the Fraternal Order of Police Tri-Cities Lodge President Scott Warren said their endorsement had to do with Blasdel not asking for it.

Blasdel has gotten nods from a series of other county coroners, and said he wasn’t trying to go after outside endorsements.