Update: Franklin Co. will defend ex-administrator in $5M lawsuit filed by its own auditor

Now that a special prosecutor has declined to file charges, Franklin County’s auditor is suing the county’s former top employee for $5 million.

That employee was under whistleblower protections and left his job with the county with a legal agreement that neither he nor the county would disparage the other or sue.

The agreement doesn’t apply to elected officials, though.

Franklin County Auditor Matt Beaton filed the $5 million lawsuit in Franklin County Superior Court this month. He’s claiming that former County Administrator Mike Gonzalez illegally recorded him in order to make him look bad.

Beaton claims his reputation has been harmed by Gonzalez’s conduct, including causing him mental pain and suffering.

Gonzalez told the Herald in a statement Wednesday that the county will be defending him against the lawsuit. A law firm based in Olympia already has been assigned to the case, he said.

“Franklin County is defending me against this lawsuit. The fact is I was protected by RCW 9.73.030 section 2 when I made that recording. Matt asked me to lie to Shawn Sant,” Gonzalez said. “I wasn’t willing to compromise my ethics, and you see the results.”

The lawsuit refers to Gonzalez by his father’s surname Cronemeyer.

He claimed that’s an effort by Beaton to minimize his Latino heritage. County records show Gonzalez is the name he uses on legal documents, though his driver’s license shows his dual last name.

“This is another display from Matt, that has now devolved into race bate politics. My legal name is Michael Richard Gonzalez-Cronemeyer. I don’t need to defend or apologize for my ethnic makeup,” he said. “He’s attempting to marginalize my Latino heritage. The fact is I have White, Puerto Rican, Mexican and Spanish blood, and I can speak Spanish.”

“Over my career as a journalist and in politics I have fought for every color, creed, orientation for what is morally right,” he said. “My grandmother Petra Gonzalez-Prado loved the word ‘Adelante.’ It means keep going. I will keep marching forward and will continue to work for the citizens that employee me.”

Secret recording of meeting

Gonzalez told sheriff’s investigators that he secretly recorded a meeting with Beaton and county Commission Chairman Rocky Mullen in January because he believed they were going to ask him to commit a crime while a criminal investigation was ongoing into a payment dispute involving the former manager of the HAPO Center.

After the county commissioners replaced the group managing the center, Gonzalez was intending to pay Simmons Venue Management for its last month of service before it handed over duties to Harris White Leasure Group in October 2023.

He decided not to move forward with the payment once he learned the commissioners opposed it.

Then the commissioners and Beaton allegedly tried to convince Harris White Leasure to push the payment through anyway.

The sheriff’s department investigated Beaton and Mullen for possible misconduct, witness tampering and making a false statement.

They were told by investigators not to meet with Gonzalez, and then investigators requested that the prosecutor’s office reiterate to Mullen and Beaton that they should not have any closed door meetings with Gonzalez while the investigation was ongoing.

Whistleblower protections are granted to employees who disclose what they believe to be improper or illegal behavior and are designed to protect the reporting party from retaliation. Acts of retaliation can result in civil penalties in Washington.

Gonzalez told investigators he never intended to release the recording, but did so after Mullen allegedly lied to investigators about what happened during the meeting, according to investigation documents released to the Herald under the state Public Records Act.

The Washington Privacy Act, which Beaton is accusing Gonzalez of violating, is clear that it does not apply to instances when one party believes the other is attempting to make unlawful demands.

Criminal tampering investigation

In the lawsuit, Beaton claims the intent of the meeting was to address Gonzalez’s “unprofessional conduct in the use of Franklin County email in discussing Franklin County business with Franklin County officials.”

He is likely referring to an email sent by Gonzalez blasting Beaton for allegedly telling the Harris White Leasure Group’s owners that he was trying to make Gonzalez look bad.

Beaton said in the recording he said if Gonzalez approved the payment against the wishes of the commissioners he would look bad, but that wasn’t his intent. He was allegedly calling Wes Harris at the direction of then-commission chairman Clint Didier in order to tell HWL to push the payment through.

“I said, ‘If he approves (the payment), the commissioners may learn more about him than they want to know, but I don’t believe they will,’” Beaton said in the recording.

Snohomish County Chief Deputy Criminal Prosecutor Elise Deschenes described Mullen and Beaton’s behavior in the meeting with Gonzalez as “irregular” and “concerning.”

She said she believed the state did not have enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime had been committed when the two men asked Gonzalez to write a letter recanting his previous statements.

However, she said, in Mullen’s case prosecutors did not have the resources to prosecute him for a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators when he was interviewed about the meeting. Gonzalez’s recording was instrumental in establishing that Mullen’s account of the meeting did not match what he told investigators.

Despite Didier’s name being mentioned about a dozen times, Mullen told investigators it never came up.

While Beaton clarified some points for investigators, he ultimately did not agree to an interview, according to the documents. Didier also did not agree to sit down with investigators.

When it came to whether Beaton tampered with a witness, Deschenes wrote, “Here, the suspect reportedly contacted Mr. Harris and told him to process the bill as he normally would. While this call was strange, and appears to have improper motivations, his actions do not amount to an unauthorized act.”

Beaton claimed in the recording that he was acting at Didier’s direction.

Deschenes also wrote that the state would have a hard time proving beyond a reasonable doubt that “the suspect’s conduct was unauthorized nor is getting Gonzalez in trouble a ‘benefit’ sufficient to prove the charge.”

When it came to whether Beaton tampered with a witness by telling Gonzalez to write a letter saying he misunderstood the situation, she wrote that it was not clear enough whether he was telling him to write the letter to other county employees or law enforcement.

“While, again, the suspect’s motivations in making the request are concerning, what he is actually requesting is not clear enough for the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the charge of Tampering with a Witness.”

She later described the letter request as odd, but said his motivation seemed to be more political than an attempt to interfere with the criminal investigation.

Severance agreement reached

In the new lawsuit, Beaton also accuses Gonzalez of unlawfully transmitting the recording of the meeting to the Tri-City Herald or misrepresenting it as a public record to a Herald employee.

However, the Herald learned of the recording from sheriff’s investigators and obtained it through a Public Records Act request.

Beaton claimed that it was Gonzalez’s intent to use the recording to get the news media to portray him in a false light.

The Herald’s reporting was based on hundreds of pages of documents, investigative reports and hours of recorded interviews by investigators with Franklin County employees, elected officials and contractors.

The investigators from both the Franklin and Benton county sheriff’s offices agreed that it was appropriate to investigate the allegations and a Superior Court judge agreed to search warrants based in part on the differences between Mullen’s claims and the recording by Gonzalez.

Gonzalez, who was recently hired as the city manager in Sunnyside, left the county earlier this year after reaching a severance agreement, which paid him $133,000 for the rest of his contract under the condition that he didn’t sue the county or say anything negative about it.

The agreement does not prevent him from testifying in other lawsuits or criminal investigations, though.

Beaton’s lawsuit was filed by Seattle attorney Joel Ard, who also is representing Beaton in a lawsuit filed to stop a recent court-mandated change to a new voter registration waiting period in Washington.

Beaton is asking a judge to award him no less than $5 million, as well as attorneys fees and any further relief the court deems necessary.

This story was originally published September 25, 2024 at 5:00 AM.