Tri-Cities transit CEO fired after board learns results of investigation
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Agency closed CEO investigation after reviewing third‑party attorney report.
- Investigation did not include interview with former CFO who raised the concerns.
- Allegations include no‑bid contracts, disputed spending and policy concerns.
The chief executive officer of Ben Franklin Transit was fired Thursday night after leading the agency for less than two years.
After a roughly 45-minute closed session, the public agency’s board reconvened in public and voted to immediately terminate Chief Executive Officer Thomas Drozt with no severance pay.
The unanimous decision was made after the board were given the findings of an investigation into Drozt.
His contract stipulated that Drozt needed to remain in his role for 24 months to be eligible for severance under some circumstances. The board did not say if he would be asked to pay back moving expenses, which the agency typically requires if someone is in the role for less than two years.
More than four months ago, Ben Franklin Transit’s former finance leader sent a letter to the agency’s board detailing Drozt’s alleged financial wrongdoing. The agency opened an investigation and hired a third party attorney to conduct interviews in February.
Thursday’s vote was greeted by clapping and cheers by audience members in the meeting room.
Chief Customer Experience Officer Brian Lubanski has been serving as interim CEO since Drozt was placed on administrative leave in early February. He will continue in that role indefinitely.
Clapping and cheering
The agency’s legal counsel, Jeremy Bishop, told the board that he would also conduct a review to identify any “blind spots” and recommend policy changes based on the review of the investigation.
Tracy Bronson, a driver and the board’s union representative, thanked the board for their decision during public comment at their regular meeting following the executive session.
“I’m hoping the closure this brings can maybe take the wedge out of BFT and the sides, so it’s not an us versus them mentality,” she said. “We need to be able to communicate, to fix what is broken here ... We need to fix what is wrong and get on the same team.”
She also thanked the board for extending Lubanski’s interim role.
Union Steward and fixed route operator Michael Wells told the Herald that he was happy with the outcome. He said Drozt came in and immediately started making unethical decisions about how he treated staff and spent taxpayer money.
“He was very unprofessional, very unethical. There’s lots of stuff I don’t want to go into detail with,” he said. “He just wasn’t the right person for this agency, he’s not local to the agency. I just wish BFT would learn to pick people that are from here and willing to spend their careers here. Those are the people you want running this agency because they know the most about it.”
He also praised Lubanski, who he believes will prioritize riders and drivers.
“I’m really happy that Brian Lubanski is our interim CEO indefinitely because Brian is marketing based and he is all about the customer and employee experience,” Wells said. “He wants everyone to be happy, he doesn’t want the union and the agency to fight over everything. It doesn’t have to be that way. That’s the way (Drozt) came in, really heavy-handed with a lot of his management.”
He hopes the decision to fire Drozt will allow the agency to begin getting back to basics.
Near the end of the meeting, Lubanski thanked the board for their trust in him and promised to do right by the community.
While the agency has closed the investigation, the attorney conducting it never interviewed former CFO Alex Smith.
Smith told the Tri-City Herald he was not interviewed because the attorney would not agree to conduct it in writing after he raised concerns about ensuring his full statements were included in the record.
It’s unclear who was interviewed for the investigation, but the Tri-City Herald has requested a copy under the Washington state Public Records Act.
Drozt has been on voluntary paid administrative leave since the beginning of February, while an outside law firm investigated allegations about some of his spending.
He has maintained that he followed the agency’s policies in all of his decisions, which include hiring a consultant with a sex offense conviction and paying his step-son nearly $5,000 for a training workshop. It’s unclear if that training ever actually happened.
The Washington state Auditor’s Office is also investigating those contracts, as well as Drozt’s credit card spending, according to emails from the state agency obtained by the Herald.
Claims against Drozt
Since Smith’s letter in October, a number of other allegations were made by current and former employees, as well as the union representing bus drivers.
The investigation was expected to address only Smith’s financial claims. At public meetings, the agency’s union has made claims of other questionable spending, bullying, a toxic workplace and unfair hiring practices.
In addition to the contracts, Smith raised concerns about the way Drozt went about discussing the setup of a $3 million grant fund. The agency has not produced any records of these meetings or documents prepared for them. Smith told the Herald they had a full plan ready for sign off.
Pasco Mayor Charles Grimm has confirmed to the Herald that the conversations took place and that the agency’s legal department was working with them to ensure everything was done within the scope of Washington state’s Open Meeting Act.
Grimm said the idea behind the program was to use excess interest earnings to help cities within the agency’s taxing district pay for minor improvement projects that were related to transit. Examples could be potholes near heavily trafficked bus stops or sidewalk repair to improve accessibility.
He shared outlines prepared for the meeting detailing what the grant fund could look like.
Drozt also allegedly asked for a favor from a potential AI vendor, “requesting access to an additional, unrelated piece of software described as a horse-betting or wagering analytics application” if the vendor was chosen.
That contract was expected to be in the range of $250,000 to $1 million, but does not appear to have been executed.
Smith wrote there were also discussions about using “the AI system in ways that could reduce represented union positions, prior to any procurement, Board review, or required notice to union leadership.”
“Directing staff to circumvent competitive procurement for a contract of this potential magnitude, while also discussing an undisclosed personal benefit and workforce reductions, presented serious compliance, governance, and ethical concerns to me,” wrote Smith.
Union officials also pointed to alleged overspending on golf carts for use at community events. Drozt maintains these were an investment that help build good will in the community and provide advertising. The issue raised was that he spent more than the grant funding the agency had secured for them.
The agency spent about $61,000 on the golf carts, at a price tag of about $8,700 plus $2,500 in upgrades for each of the five carts. The grant funding was only enough for two, according to the transit board’s union representative.
Employees have also claimed Drozt took a cart home at one point.
Questionable contracts
• The first contract being looked into is for Something Unlimited. Drozt awarded the no-bid contract worth up to $131,000 to convicted sex offender Daniel Matta of Phoenix, Ariz. Drozt had previously worked with Matta. This contract was paid monthly in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $15,000, according to board meeting minutes showing the payments.
• The second contract was with Civic Edge Consulting. The contract was awarded to a company owned by Drozt’s son-in-law, according to public records. An invoice shows the transit agency paid $4,900 for a two-day leadership workshop.
• It is unclear how the Civic Edge contract was paid, but emails to Drozt show staff saying it needed to be paid around July 2025 along with a credit card charge for a Tri-Cities nonprofit. The transit agency withheld the credit card statement covering the first three weeks of July because it is part of an investigation.
The agency provided the contract for Something Unlimited, but not one for Civic Edge or proof the training took place.
Security to watch employees
Records show that transit management staff called the police on employees and a union representative six times in the week around a December meeting the union planned to picket at.
Armed security guards were hired for this meeting with instructions to escort out disruptive employees at the board’s request, and to watch the agency’s main office for a month after.
Drozt told the board during the meeting that this was the first phase of a planned system-wide rollout.
He still maintains that was the case, but the transit agency could not provide records showing that any conversations with the security contractor happened before that week’s meeting.
The security officers were specifically requested for the meeting, according to emails to Phoenix Protective Corp. A call to Richland police by a member of management also mentioned they had hired the security specifically for the meeting. They were requesting additional police presence for the planned protest.
The emails to the security contractor show the agency making a short notice request in December. In January the possibility of future expansion was mentioned, but no details were given.
It was not until late February that any details of what an expansion might look like was discussed. This was after Drozt was already on leave and the interim CEO had been directed to present the board a full security plan.
Drozt previously told the Herald in an email that the records do not reflect the full scope of conversations with the security agency, and that he followed all applicable agency policies.
“The use of security was part of a planned, phased approach that had been under development for several months to enhance safety across the system,” Drozt said. “The timeline was accelerated to support public meetings during a period of heightened tension, with the goal of maintaining a safe and orderly environment for all participants. The presence of security at such meetings was not without precedent.”
Three calls were made to Richland police in an attempt to trespass union representative Russell Shjerven from the agency’s office. The other two calls came after the board meeting to report a former employee had allegedly spit on a car after confrontations with Drozt and another manager.
He left the meeting on his own, but was followed out by security officers.
Richland police told transit managers that the former employee did not commit a crime.
They told the officer that they just wanted the incident documented because the former employee had filed a grievance. However, Shjerven told the Herald in January that he was not aware of those calls to Richland police, despite the union being engaged in arbitration for that employee.
Ben Franklin Transit denied that police were called related to the confrontation at the meeting, claiming the call was for vandalism after the Herald reported on the call logs from dispatchers and notes from officers.
That former employee has since been banned for a year from attending the agency’s meeting, after the manager whose car he allegedly spit on asked for a protection order, according to a discussion and vote by the board at its February meeting.
The former employee can still watch the meeting online and submit comments in writing.
Large severance payouts
The records also show the agency has paid out more than $85,000 for three executive staff member severance payments between July 2025 and February 2026.
Employees have said at public meetings that in addition to unfair hiring of friends and former colleagues, Drozt also pushed out longtime employees.
The transit agency provided only the payout amounts and the department the employee worked in.
A July 2025 payment for nearly $29,000 matches a request for records by the Herald for a severance payment made to an employee acting as a clerk to the board.
Unlike the other two severance payments, that one did not specify it was a payout for weeks or months worth of salary. It’s unclear how the agency determined nearly $29,000 was the appropriate amount of severance.
An October 2025 severance payout for nearly $39,000 was listed as equivalent to three months of salary.
A February 2026 severance for almost $18,000 was listed as six weeks worth of salary.
This story was originally published April 9, 2026 at 5:49 PM.
