Franklin leaders clash over jail, HAPO Center spending. WA audit tells different story

The Washington State Auditors Office delivered a report about a lack of oversight on contracts in Franklin County this week, but elected officials there have very different interpretations of what they were told.

The county commissioners came away with the impression that the state was placing the blame on the sheriff’s office, while Sheriff Jim Raymond detailed in a public post how he said his staff has repeatedly flagged the issues in recent years.

The areas the state auditor’s office looked into were troubled finances at the HAPO Center, a jail commissary contract and the jail’s medical contract.

The county sent out a news release Tuesday claiming the sheriff was responsible for the jail contract problems, painting the issue as a nearly $2 million error.

Raymond shot back in a news release of his own that these were known issues and should have been reviewed regularly by the commissioners and County Auditor Matt Beaton. Raymond said they are responsible for contract oversight and blamed the dispute on long-standing vendettas.

As recently as this month, Commission Chairman Clint Didier abruptly recessed a commission meeting during an argument with the sheriff.

The Tri-City Herald obtained the two audit reports totaling nearly 150 pages from state officials.

While plenty of blame is being spread around, the reports ultimately indicate that the county failed to properly monitor its contracts and finances over a period of several years after significant turnover.

That turnover is largely the result of very public instability and infighting.

“The county did not dedicate sufficient resources to ensure accurate reporting of its financial statements,” said one report. As a result, their financial statements contained errors.

State auditors told commissioners the county needs to review their financial and contract policies, provide better oversight and attempt to reconcile areas where the county was unable to provide documents to support revenues and spending.

Jail commissary issues

The Franklin County jail entered into a contract with a vendor in 2018 to provide commissary services for the facility. The agreement included a profit-sharing provision.

At some point the agreement stopped automatically sending quarterly payments to the county. The error was caught last year when a new jail commander began reviewing the facility’s contracts, Raymond said.

That resulted in the county receiving nearly $1 million in back payments. That was discussed extensively in public sessions and reported by the Tri-City Herald last fall during the county’s budgeting cycle. The recouped payment helped the county at a time when they were facing a multi-million budget shortfall.

While the county auditor’s office routinely reviews contracts and payments, it’s unclear why that wasn’t flagged sooner.

Jail medical contract

The second major issue in contention is the jail’s medical contract. The audit found that the county approved and paid $1.2 million more than contracted between 2020 and 2024.

Raymond said this issue was flagged to the county commission regularly as the cost of medical services continued to rise. Franklin County is one of the fastest growing areas of the state.

Raymond said that he wanted to be clear that the contractor, Western Medical, has done nothing wrong.

The extra costs are the results of increased medical needs at the jail, not services being incorrectly billed, he explained. Part of that cost comes from inmates needing to be taken to outside providers when medical staff isn’t available at the jail.

The jail’s medical costs are reviewed at least annually during the county’s budgeting process.

HAPO Center turnover

The HAPO Center financial concerns were less clear.

State auditors reviewed a period from 2022 through 2023, when the center was under three separate management teams. They did not specify which groups they were referring to during the presentation.

The center was being managed by county employees until mid-summer 2022, when the entire team quit, followed by the county administrator weeks later.

At that point their caterer, Simmons Venue Management, stepped up to help with a temporary contract.

The following year, the county abruptly moved to replace them, and another county administrator was hired and quickly forced out.

State auditors said they found no indication that any financial controls were bypassed.

However, they said the county was unable to provide sufficient supporting documentation to match revenues and expenditures reported by management groups.

“The county experienced turnover in the county administrator position three times during the period, which led to a lack of contract oversight for the HAPO Center operations,” the report said.

The audit said that because of the county’s internal control deficiencies, state auditors found the county:

• Overstated revenue and expenditures by $5 million.
• Misclassified $1.5 million of governmental expenses in the American Rescue Plan Act funds as social service expenditures.
• Incorrectly reported tax revenue of $6 million in debt service funds. This revenue should be reported in special revenue funds.
• Did not identify nearly $2 million as funding passed through to subrecipients on the Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards.

The American Rescue Plan Act fund payment discrepancies stemmed from the county not ensuring 10 contractors were eligible to participate in federal programs.

State auditors recommended during the meeting that the county strengthen its oversight of contracts and seek outside help in determining if any other costs were still owed and need to be recouped.

Dispute with former vendor

The county’s response, included in the audit, said that it created a new debt service fund related to the HAPO Center for the 2024 budget, but did not retroactively apply it to 2023 financial statements.

The county claims it engaged the former vendor for the documentation needed to do so.

The discrepancy here appears to stem from the county no longer having immediate access to bookkeeping from the former contractor after abruptly moving to replace them mid-year. They do not appear to have been reviewing their financials at all during the time the vendor ran the center, according to the state report.

The county is only now in the process of implementing proper contractor oversight, the report said.

“The county did not ensure the contract terms were followed and instead allowed the management company to manage all the financial activity and only provide profit and loss statements throughout the year,” the report said.

The county’s contract with a new management company resolved most of the control issues, but state auditors said the county still was not able to show that it was properly monitoring the new contract, according to the reports.

“The county was also unable to provide evidence that it was monitoring financial activity at the HAPO Center for either of the two contracts in place during the period.”

State auditors said staff in the county administrator’s office was responsible for monitoring these contracts.

The county lost its previous administrator the same month as the entire HAPO Center staff. SVM then stepped in to help run the center during that time.

When a new county administrator was hired, he flagged several contract issues at the HAPO Center and engaged a consulting company to review the county’s policies and processes.

He soon left the position after being made a whistleblower in an investigation into suspected misconduct toward the vendors.

In emails to the county, during a criminal investigation into whether commissioners and the auditor improperly demanded the administrator manipulate payments, the previous management group offered to let the county review all of its finances during a dispute in which the county held onto reimbursements for more than six months.

The emails were obtained by the Tri-City Herald as part of a public records request. A Snohomish County prosecutor assigned to review the case ultimately decided not to pursue charges against Commissioner Rocky Mullen and Beaton due to a lack of evidence. The prosecutor noted at the time that they chose not to pursue a charge against Mullen for lying to investigators because of a lack of resources.

The prosecutor described Mullen and Beaton’s actions as “concerning,” “irregular,” and “odd.” Didier was never publicly named as a suspect in the investigation, though Beaton did say during a secretly recorded meeting that he was acting to block a payment at Didier’s request.

During Wednesday’s meeting commissioners said they had recently sent a certified letter making a request for the contractor’s finances.

It is unclear why they did not move forward with the review when offered by SVM last year, though Beaton said in recordings that he wanted to request outside audits of the finances.

The county has also been working to implement better financial controls after the review by a consulting group showed they lacked key financial policies. One of the major issues the county ran into was event contracts, typically used to rent the HAPO Center for a weekend, being used for multi-year commitments.

Raymond said in his news release that if a thorough review of HAPO Center finances indicated any kind of embezzlement, the sheriff’s office would investigate it. The state audit report does not imply any crime may have occurred.

This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 4:02 PM.

Cory McCoy

Tri-City Herald

Cory is an award-winning investigative reporter. He joined the Tri-City Herald in Dec. 2021 as an Editor/Reporter covering social accountability issues. His past work can be found in the Tyler Morning Telegraph and other Texas newspapers. He was a 2019-20 Education Writers Association Fellow, and has been featured on The Murder Tapes, Grave Mysteries and Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen.