FILE - This undated photo courtesy of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife shows a wolf of the Teanaway Pack fitted with a radio collar in the Teanaway area of Washington's Central Cascades in Washington state.
Courtesy of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife / AP
In early August, the leader of Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife had become so concerned with alleged behaviors of the citizen panel that he answers to that he asked Gov. Bob Ferguson to investigate.
Kelly Susewind, the agency director, questioned whether conduct by members of the state Fish and Wildlife Commission complied with state laws after poring through a trove of their emails and texts obtained and shared publicly by an advocacy group for hunters and anglers.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance had argued that commissioners violated state requirements for open meetings and records disclosure, and that they disregarded mandates to maximize hunting and fishing. The group was pressing Ferguson to remove four commissioners.
Against this backdrop, Susewind made his extraordinary request for an inquiry into the commission, which oversees his department and has the power to remove a director should it choose.
“I know this is a big ask,” he wrote the governor Aug. 5. Susewind said an investigation could clear up a cloud of uncertainty shrouding the nine-person commission. If wrongdoing occurred, he said, the governor could remove members because each is appointed by the executive.
A few days later, it became public that Ferguson had ordered an investigation. “The governor takes concerns from an agency director very seriously,” Ferguson’s communications director, Brionna Aho, told the Standard.
Four months later, the investigation continues. It may be February before it is done.
And, it turns out, Ferguson set it in motion earlier than previously acknowledged.
On June 20, according to documents the Standard obtained through a public records request, the Office of Financial Management signed a $40,000 contract with Chiedza Nziramasanga of Transformative Workplace Investigations.
The firm was hired to “provide a comprehensive investigation of a reported experience in a work unit to allow leadership to determine if any discrimination, retaliation and/or other policy violations occurred as alleged.”
Although the commission and agency are not identified in the contract, the Office of Financial Management confirmed that the contract was for the Fish and Wildlife Commission investigation.
The hiring came weeks after Ferguson received a petition from the Sportsmen’s Alliance to remove the four commissioners. Susewind said he was not told a contract was issued.
“I wrote my (August) letter and I was informed they hired an investigator,” Susewind said. “I’ve not been privy to anything going on with that contract.”
It’s not clear how the scope of the investigation overlaps with or goes beyond the Sportsmen’s Alliance claims.
Ferguson has not publicly commented on the Sportsmen’s Alliance petition and Aho declined to answer questions on how it factored into the hiring of the investigator. That petition and supporting materials were the first documents provided to the investigator in mid-August, based on information the Standard obtained through a public records request.
The governor’s office “was aware of a possible need to investigate, based on a preliminary conversation” with the department, Aho wrote in an email. “After the governor received the letter from Director Susewind laying out his concerns, it was clear an investigation was needed.”
Originally, the investigator’s final report was to be turned in by Oct. 7, with the contract ending Nov. 11.
Earlier this month, the contract was extended and its cost increased. Transformative Investigations will now earn $64,000 and its findings are due by Feb. 13.
Commissioners who’ve repeatedly said there was no cause for an inquiry were further rankled upon learning the investigator won’t be done until next year.
“I’m very frustrated with the amount of time it’s taking to try and resolve the whole issue,” said Commissioner John Lehmkuhl, who the investigator interviewed in November.
‘It’ll yield what it yields’
Seeds of this investigation were planted in November 2022 when the commission voted to stop recreational hunting of black bears in the spring.
Sportsmen’s Alliance, an Ohio-based organization, opposed the decision.
The next year, it started requesting emails, texts and other communications of commissioners, convinced the correspondence would reveal violations of state laws requiring public meetings and preservation of public records. It took a lawsuit, but the group received thousands of records.
On May 16, the group filed the petition asking Ferguson to remove commissioners Barbara Baker, Lorna Smith, Melanie Rowland and Lehmkuhl, alleging misconduct and malfeasance.
Susewind, agency director for seven years, said he became concerned as he read some of the records produced in response to the alliance’s request. He shared his concerns with the governor’s office but said he was not asked directly by Ferguson’s staff to request some kind of action. He did that on his own.
“I just decided it was best for everybody to have an independent investigation to see what’s going on. It’ll yield what it yields,” he said.
Susewind, along with the commissioners named in the petition, are among those who’ve been interviewed by the investigator.
Alliance leaders have not received any response from the governor to their petition. Nor had anyone from the group been interviewed for the investigation as of early December.
“It is very surprising that this has not occurred as our inquiries and scrutiny are what precipitated the investigation,” said Michael Jean, Sportsmen’s Alliance attorney, in an email.
‘It’s very disruptive’
Commissioners targeted in the petition are frustrated. Some wrote letters to Ferguson to rebut claims in the petition and are disappointed at his lack of response. They feel the protracted inquiry is undermining the panel.
“This has been a pretty stressful, awful situation,” said Commissioner Lorna Smith. “It has had a chilling effect on everything this commission wants to be doing.”
Smith said she’s not sure the state’s ever carried out an investigation of a citizen commission in this manner.
“I do not see that they have any grounds for their claims. That’s how I think it will turn out,” she said. “If I or any other commissioners stepped over any lines, it was totally not on purpose.”
Lehmkuhl said, “It’s just sort of hanging over us. It’s very disruptive.”
Commissioner Jim Anderson said since becoming chair in August that he’s not felt the investigation has impeded the commission’s work.
“It is what it is. I don’t think we as a commission have gotten high-centered on this,” he said. “I would like to have it done yesterday because it would give us clarity of where things came out.”
Is change on the horizon?
The investigation is the latest flare-up for the panel. A report released last year included interviews with people who described the commission as “dysfunctional.” It also suggested that the commission’s structure might need to be overhauled.
And shortly after taking office, Ferguson halted two commissioner nominations former Gov. Jay Inslee made. He upset some wildlife conservationists by cutting a commissioner they supported and installing nominees with support from hunters, anglers, and a bloc of tribes.
A pending House bill would have the agency director appointed by the governor and the commission’s role shifted from oversight to advisory. There’s a Senate bill to retool the process for naming commissioners. Both face long odds in the upcoming session.
Sen. Mike Chapman, D-Port Angeles, chair of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, said at a hearing in early December that he’s not planning to advance either policy next year.
“If it were up to me and me alone, which it’ll never be nor should it be, but I believe that the department should be a cabinet-level position. But I have no intention of hearing a bill like that this session,” he said. He added that he also did not plan to hear the bill to change the makeup of the commission.
Chapman invited groups with concerns about how the department is being run to come together to find efficiencies and reforms so that the commission “is a state agency that we all can be, continue to be proud of.”
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