NOTE: ARTICLE ARCHIVED AS IS ON THE DAY OF ORIGINAL POSTING FROM CITYOFCAMAS.US
State Audit of CWEDA Completed
In this video, Mayor Barry McDonnell gives a quick update regarding the recent State Audit of CWEDA.
Transcription: "Hey, I just wanted to follow up on an audit that we received today from the State. The audit was of CWEDA. CWEDA was the association that was created by the leadership of the Cities of Washougal and Camas and the Port of Camas-Washougal. The primary mission of CWEDA was to help existing businesses succeed and bring new businesses and jobs to the area. Annually, in accordance with an inter-local agreement, the Port provided $100,000 and each City provided spent $50,000 each year on this. The Association was formed in 2011 and was governed by a 3-member Board from each jurisdiction. The Office of the Washington State Auditor recently audited the organization and showed the Association's Board did not provide adequate oversight over financial activities, which resulted in a loss of public funds.
There were three findings from the audit, CWEDA's Board (Camas Washougal Economic Development Association) did not:
Did not comply with the Open Public Meetings Act.
Did not ensure annual reports were submitted promptly to the State Auditor's Office in accordance with State law.
Did not have any internal controls at the Association to safeguard public resources. Specifically, the Board did not adequately monitor the Association's financial activity.
There was also a fraud investigation that determined a disbursement misappropriation totaling $19,311 that occurred at the Association between February 15, 2013 - February 12, 2019. They also found questionable transactions totaling just over $45,000 that occurred between April 30, 2012 - March 1, 2019.
I am very appreciative of the State Auditor's Office doing the thorough work that they did. CWEDA has been disbanded and will no longer be in existence starting next month. We currently have no one at the City-level that had any oversight on this organization. As I said in my last video, I am confident that this type of audit will make us stronger and improve controls in the future. Again, we don't have any similar Associations currently that I am concerned with. I just wanted to follow up as you will probably be hearing more about this in the news. I just wanted to let you know what was going on. Thank you for your time. We will talk soon."
Each city paid $50,000 each, and the port paid in $100,000, a total of $200,000 into the CWEDA account every year. Over approx 8 years of CWEDA, (june 2011-June 2019) that would be ~$1,600,000 for CWEDA. The former Mayor had full access to the funds, with no oversight from the CWEDA board for years, until the latter years when the state auditor announced a pending audit, according to the report. His salary was ~$9700/month paid to his sole proprietor consulting company, ~164,000/year, PLUS expenses, some of which apparently were for personal use. Update. The cities and port didn't pay into CWEDA in the years 2019 or 2020.
So he paid himself $200K/year on top of the $850K he paid his company? Oh Snap!
Willing to bet that the $19K is just the tip of the proverbial ice berg and is nothing but a false flag. Nobody would blow a $100K+ gig for that amount.
Mayor McDonnell informed the public about this report the day it was released, which is a significant improvement over the prior mayor. This city report deserves a "D" because the highly paid consultants who post reports to the Camas City website included no links to the actual public fraud and accountability reports performed by the state auditor. Maybe it would be better for the city to prepare it's own information rather than rely on lazy consultants. In contrast, WatchCamas posted an official summary of the state auditor reports, with links to the actual reports for citizen review. When former Camas Mayor Dennis resigned from CWEDA in May of 2019, former Camas Mayor Shannon Turk, who was also serving as one of 3 CWEDA voting board members, didn't post anything about the resignation to the city website. In fact, thru the November 2019 election, the CWEDA.org website continued to feature Paul Dennis as the CWEDA Executive Director, including a phone contact listed, the same phone number used for former Mayor Dennis' consulting firm. Free advertising for former Mayor Dennis, and another misuse of public resources for private gain from the CWEDA board failure to update the website. Perhaps some hoped the facade would remain intact, or maybe it was just a continuation of CWEDA neglect.
"Wraps up"...
Ridiculous PR spin attempt trying to say, "it's over, moving on, sure glad it was nothing".
The actual auditor's message ends that the funding have been forwarded to law enforcement.
Why are you agreeing to be the face of this thing Barry? Why not arrange a virtual press conference where the 5-6 council members that supported CWEDA every step of the way can explain their inaction? Why do you all have to wait to be told you're wrong by voters and state auditors?
Nobody believes you - Okay, I shouldn't say nobody.... 90% of this town doesn't believe you.
Camas deserves better all around.
The mayor's comments about CWEDA disbanding seem to frame it as an action taken in response to this incident. In fact, CWEDA was trying to disband quietly at the end of last year before any of this went got too loud.
Though he didn't have much time in the position, Mayor Barry McDonnell was the city liason to CWEDA, along with councilor Steve Hogan who's been with the city much longer.
Barry seems to be fine accepting his role as the face of this scandal, when he's a newcomer to Camas. Six councilors and countless staff members stand behind him silently with much stronger ties to this developing story. There are many unanswered questions with this story. Among them...
What does Camas' formerly appointed mayor Turk have to say about all this?
What does the majority of the Camas City council, a majority of members that served before CWEDA was even created and through it's entire ill-fated run, have to say?
And where is Paul Dennis, the man who resigned as the your sitting mayor of Camas specifically to run this organization?