PORT ANGELES — Even though the calendar said Jan. 4, Clallam County Community Development Director Sheila Roark Miller had a staff member write “Dec. 27” as the approval date for a development permit for a $614,371 Agnew-area mushroom growing and processing business, she said.
County Human Resources Department lawyer Akin Blitz calls it falsification of a public record and has recommended that the state Attorney General’s Office consider charges against Roark Miller.
Roark Miller calls it doing the right thing.
She said Athens, Ohio, resident George Vaughan’s permit for the 527 Spring Road operation should have been processed by her staff in December in a more timely manner.
Had the permit been issued Jan. 4, Vaughan would have had to obtain a water mitigation certificate, a water right or a portion of a water right, Department of Ecology spokesman Dan Partridge and county Permit Center Manager Tom Shindler said.
While Vaughan is not the landowner — it’s owned by Alfred Spring — Vaughan would have been responsible for complying with water rule regulations, Partridge said.
Vaughan’s DCD permit was for a 10,000-square-foot building.
Processing the permit Dec. 27 allowed Vaughan to avoid water-use restrictions imposed as of Jan. 2 as part of the new Dungeness-area water rule that restricts the use of water from Bagley Creek to Sequim Bay.
“I backdated the permit,” Roark Miller said. “That was the right thing to do for the applicant’s sake.
“I was doing the right thing and doing the right thing for my department.
“It was reasonable to have that processed by the end of the year, and that was my authority to do so,” she said. “I don’t think the consequences of our inaction should become the burden of the applicant.”
Roark Miller said that as the county building official, she has the authority to backdate the permit, citing 105.3.1 of the International Building Code, a state-adopted code that applies to all counties in the Washington:
“The building official shall examine or cause to be examined applications for permits and amendments thereto within a reasonable time after filing,” it says.
“If the building official is satisfied that the proposed work conforms to the requirements of this code and laws and ordinances applicable thereto, the building official shall issue a permit therefor as soon as practicable.”
But appending an earlier date to the permit instead of the actual date, also known as backdating, was among the factors that led Blitz to allege that Miller altered, destroyed or backdated documents that led to the falsification of public records.
Blitz recently identified, in a report that has not been released to the public, seven possible charges that are now under review by the state Attorney General’s Office.
The investigation grew from a Feb. 21 whistle-blower complaint from a DCD employee.
The employee alleged Roark Miller, the nation’s only elected DCD director, “has an active building permit and seems to be utilizing her power in order to get special privileges that are not granted to the public.”
The whistle-blower had said Roark Miller asked an employee to inspect a job site on a Sunday and not record the overtime.
Roark Miller said an employee overheard a conversation she had in the office and made assumptions about what had happened.
She said she had told the inspector to take time off to make up for the work and that it was the inspector who did not want to be paid.
The issue of the backdated permit grew out of interviews conducted by Blitz’s investigation into the whistle-blower complaint and has been referred to the state Attorney General’s Office.
In a June 19 cover letter to the report, Blitz said Roark Miller’s actions “directly or indirectly resulted in the alteration, destruction or falsification by backdating Clallam County DCD documents and a reduction of permit fees due from the applicant under circumstances that may have warranted a waiver of the 2013 fee increases but do not appear to constitute a justification or defense for falsification of public records.
“Most likely the primary task is your determination of whether a criminal prosecution is warranted with regard to this transaction,” Blitz said in the cover letter.
The potential charges are injury to a public record, injury to and misappropriation of a record, offering a false instrument for filing or record and misappropriation and falsification of accounts by a public officer, all felonies; and official misconduct, false report and public officer making false certificates, a gross misdemeanor.
State Assistant Attorney General Scott Marlow has been assigned to the case.
He did not return calls Tuesday about the case.
Vaughan did not return repeated calls for comment on the project.
Landowner Alfred Spring’s wife said Spring would not comment on the project.
Project engineer-architect Donna Peterson also refused to comment.
Roark Miller knows Peterson “fairly well,” she said.
“I’ve known her since I started working here.”
Roark Miller has worked at the DCD for 23 years.
She was elected as director in 2010.
The county has been billed $1,568 for work through May 31 — 19 days before the cover letter was issued — for its work investigating the whistle-blower complaint, according to county Human Resources Analyst Annie Achziger
The county may receive additional billing statements in the future, county Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Brian Wendt said Tuesday.
Wendt said it was his understanding that Blitz tries to bill the company on a monthly basis.”
Blitz could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
