Censure is not enough for Port of Benton commissioner | Editorial

The Port of Benton has been in a state of turmoil since before COVID-19. Last month, two of the port’s three commissioners could have demanded accountability and started a reset.

Instead, Commissioners Lori Stevens and Bill O’Neil delivered a slap on the wrist to their colleague, Scott Keller, whom an independent investigation said violated state law and the Washington Constitution. Meanwhile, the board has punished high-ranking staff, suspending one and firing another. Voters should consider firing the board the next chance they get.

Of the four principal findings against Keller in the report by the law firm Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, the commission acted on just one. Stevens and O’Neil voted to censure Keller for intimidating a port employee. A censure delivers no actual punishment, only shame, and Keller has demonstrated that he has little of that.

When it came to the other three transgressions, Stevens and O’Neil shrugged and moved on.

Keller granted an apparently illegally low lease rate for a golf course operated by his second cousin. He received free water at his privately owned airport hangar through an unpermitted connection. O’Neil waved that off, citing the last-minute discovery of a document he said proved the port agreed to provide water service to hangars decades ago. The document has not been released to the public.

And Keller unilaterally reduced his own ground lease payments. Did the board conclude that these incidents were not important because they happened years ago when Keller was the port’s executive director? The port – and by extension the public – lost significant revenue because of his nepotism and self-serving actions.

Charging below-market lease rates could put the Richland Airport in violation of Federal Aviation Administration requirements for the federal grants that keep the airport in business too.

The port should have immediately referred the investigative report to prosecutors for consideration. The statute of limitations might have expired on these violations, but it does not hurt to ask. Even if legal jeopardy is off the table, Stevens and O’Neil should demand Keller’s resignation, not give him cover.

The Washington State Auditor’s Office has received a complaint about the port and could incorporate it into an audit scheduled for later this year. That is too long to wait, and an audit alone provides insufficient accountability.

While all this is going on, commissioners are eliminating staff under circumstances that reek of retaliation. The full board suspended Executive Director Diahann Howard in January. Her attorney says the board punished her for forwarding complaints about Keller.

There were certainly good reasons to be skeptical about Howard. When she originally became executive director, it was under the cloud of a different investigator’s report that found she had retaliated against port staff who had filed complaints. Yet that should have affected her hiring years ago, not suspending her now.

More recently, the port’s Atlas Agro $1.5 billion ‘low-carbon’ fertilizer plant deal has teetered on the edge of becoming a fiasco, but commissioners’ fingerprints are on that just as much as Howard’s.

Another victim of the board is Finance Director Alicia Myers, a former state auditor and fraud specialist who joined the port just months ago. The board fired her on Feb. 2. She claims it was because she did her job too well, including releasing the Keller investigation as state public records law requires.

The port says that Myers’ termination was due to unsatisfactory performance during her probationary period, but it has yet to put forward any evidence to back that up. It is hard to ignore the fact that two experienced professionals suddenly became incompetent in the eyes of the board immediately after damning information about a commissioner came to light.

This dysfunction is not new. When Keller retired abruptly in 2019 from his role as executive director, a grievance investigation concluded the port was in turmoil with divided loyalties and commissioners at each other’s throats.

The Port of Benton employs 22 people, has a $26 million annual budget and collects $3.3 million in property taxes. It operates two airports, manages business parks and has significant economic development responsibilities. That work requires stable, ethical leadership that has been lacking for years.

Keller should resign. If he will not, Stevens and O’Neil should have to explain to the public why they are comfortable serving alongside someone who, by the port’s own investigation, broke the law and state Constitution.