Few likely expected State Auditor Troy Kelley to resign his post following last month’s news that a jury in federal court deadlocked on 14 counts related to charges of possession of stolen money, money laundering, lying under oath and other offenses.
Kelley, who has proved some grasp of reality by announcing he won’t run for re-election, might have been expected to quietly serve out the balance of his term and hope that federal prosecutors wouldn’t refile the charges.
Instead, Kelley chose to use the hung jury, which acquitted him on only one charge of lying to the IRS, as cover to fire two staffers and relieve a third of duties pending a scheduled retirement, just a week later and with next to no explanation.
All three, members of the communications staff of the auditor’s office, had served the office throughout the turmoil following allegations that prior to taking office in 2013, Kelley’s real-estate service’s business had pocketed $3 million in fees that prosecutors said should have been refunded to homeowners.
Kelley took a seven-month leave after the allegations surfaced, but returned to office in December. Yet he waited until after it was announced the jury had deadlocked — and while his deputy state auditor, who had run the office in his absence, was on vacation — to demand the resignations, telling his communications manager, for example, “You can either resign, effective immediately, or I can fire you.”
Gov. Jay Inslee immediately asked Kelley, using the authority of the governor’s office under the state Constitution, to explain why he demanded the resignations.
Kelley’s written explanation to Inslee, released Wednesday, was that he had lost confidence in the staffers and fired them because he could. But Kelley also took a page-and-a-half to petulantly misdirect attention from himself to attack Inslee as well as state Attorney General Bob Ferguson regarding problems at the Department of Transportation and Department of Corrections.
(Is it necessary to note that Inslee and Ferguson, fellow Democrats, were among a long list of officials and lawmakers to call for Kelley’s resignation?)
“I hope you have a deeper concern for the various serious management issues facing your cabinet agencies right now,” Kelley wrote in his letter to the governor.
Kelley’s letter accuses Ferguson of forcing the resignation of former assistant attorney general Ronda Larson, who the letter defends as a “scapegoat” in the scandal that saw the premature release of some 3,200 state inmates going back more than a decade because of a software flaw that miscalculated sentences. Granted, the blame goes deeper than Larson, but it was Larson who, according to a report to the governor by two former federal prosecutors, gave “seriously flawed” advice that after the problem was discovered it was not necessary to do hand recounts of sentences for pending releases until the software flaw was fixed.
Risking a waste of ink and newsprint, we’ll again request that Kelley — in the interest of the smooth operation of a vital part of the government that ensures state and local governments operate with efficiency and transparency — step down from office.
Regardless of his guilt or innocence related to the federal charges, his actions since the end of his trial in firing dedicated staff and in his response to a legitimate request for an explanation provide no confidence in his ability to serve.
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