Tri-Cities business pushed out by Franklin County still owed thousands, records show

As tensions over payments mounted between Franklin County and its former HAPO Center managers, the Tri-Cities company says a less experienced business may not have weathered the storm.

After years of being paid for events within 30 days, Simmons Venue Management found itself waiting months for about $145,000 in payments.

They’ve catered at the center since 2017 and handled all of its business as the management company for more than a year before the county commissioners voted last fall to bring in a new group.

So when their invoices from October, November and December 2023 were only partially paid by February 2024, the company sent a strongly worded letter to the county asking what was going on. Eight months later, they’re still owed at least $12,500.

New documents obtained by the Tri-City Herald through a Washington Public Records Act show that while the Simmons have largely been quiet and kept their heads down during attempts by some elected officials to reject their invoices, they’ve continued their work despite the county regularly being months late with major payments.

SVM even encouraged the county to perform an audit to settle any allegations that their bills were not aboveboard.

Then in April, the county sat on a payment from a credit union event that included a large tip of $500 each for employees who worked the event.

It took the owner of the HAPO Center’s new management group coming to a public meeting in July to get the county to approve the gratuity money intended for those workers.

Until recently, the Simmons didn’t know that two county commissioners and the auditor were under criminal investigation for allegedly misusing their office over an internal dispute involving a payment to their company.

Despite that, SVM co-owner Kyle Simmons told the Herald he wants to give the county the benefit of the doubt, but noted that a restaurant with less experience managing the ups and downs of slow seasons might have been sunk by such large blows to their revenue.

Simmons told the Herald he didn’t think the late payments were intentional. He said he thinks it’s more likely that some of the payment procedures changed when they handed over the reins to Harris White Leasure Group and that the county hasn’t fully ironed out the kinks on its end.

Even after learning that the county had been allegedly targeting SVM, with two of the elected officials bashing them in recordings obtained by investigators, the Simmons have tried to soldier on and continue working with the event center’s new managers.

Kyle Simmons co-owns SVM along with his parents Steve and Shirley Simmons. Steve Simmons has since retired from day-to-day operations.

Simmons said his family was shocked when the news broke in May that county commissioners Clint Didier, Rocky Mullen and Auditor Matt Beaton were under criminal investigation for actions related to allegedly trying to manipulate a payment to their company.

The three elected officials are accused of trying to push through a payment for SVM’s October management fee, after telling the former county Administrator Mike Gonzalez not to, in an apparent move to make Gonzalez look bad.

They then allegedly tried to cover it up and are accused of interfering in the investigation at several points, according to court documents.

Sheriff’s department investigators are working with an outside prosecutor from Snohomish County on the case and no one has been charged with a crime.

Financial headache

The Simmons family stepped up in 2022 to help manage the HAPO Center after all of the event center’s management team quit within a month.

While Didier and Mullen weren’t happy with the Simmons managing the center, they ultimately approved the interim contract.

Last October, SVM worked with the new managers of Harris White Leasure to hand off day-to-day management of the center, and SVM stepped back into its catering role. The transition period took longer than expected. Some of the delays involved revisions to Harris White Leasure’s contract and the need to use SVM’s liquor license until a new one could be approved.

Steve Simmons paid the November electricity bill on his own credit card because the county had not yet transferred that account to HWL, according to a letter from SVM.

Recently Harris White Leasure had to similarly pay the center’s garbage fees out of pocket, according to discussion at a July county commission meeting.

Series of delayed payments

Around the time the criminal investigation began into the elected officials, the county also was sitting a $20,000 payment from SVM for an event.

County employees were allegedly told not to accept the deposit because they wanted to find out if SVM still owed the county money and accepting that money might be misconstrued as closing out the account, according to interviews with county employees as part of the criminal investigation.

Then in February the Simmons had to send a letter to the county asking why only half of a $120,000 payment for events in fall had been processed.

After that letter, the rest of the payment was made, Kyle Simmons told the Herald.

Simmons said they sent the letter because they still didn’t know why they hadn’t been paid their October management fee.

“Our business is very cyclical. We do half of our business in the fourth quarter, so when you’re going into the slowest quarter you start depleting cash reserves,” Simmons said. “So when you have $120,000 sitting out there in accounts receivable it does become a burden.”

In that letter, signed by Shirley Simmons, they also mention that it seemed like the county felt a review of their balance sheets was necessary, and they encouraged them to do so in order to show that no funds had been mishandled.

“Steve (Simmons) has also asked for an acknowledgment that the county is satisfied with how SVM manage funds belonging to the county. We have received no response,” Shirley Simmons wrote at the time.

“This has led us to believe that either the county does not agree or that the county thinks that we have mishandled county funds. This is a matter that deeply concerns us and, we believe, needs to be addressed immediately,” she wrote.

She also asked once again that the county approve their October management fee. The emails turned over to the Herald under the public record request did not include any response from county officials.

The next major issue came when SVM catered a large event for HAPO Credit Union in April 2024.

The credit union submitted its invoice with a $500 tip for each of the workers. The $13,000 total was split into two checks — $6,000 for HWL bartenders and $7,000 for SVM catering employees.

Wes Harris of HWL came to the county commissioner meeting in July 2024 to ask for the tip to be disbursed.

Simmons said the gratuity payment was finally made, but it put employees in a bad position.

The commissioners apologized to Harris in July for the delay, but didn’t explain why it took so long.

“I don’t understand why things were getting held up with the county, because it isn’t fair to employees who are service workers who are (living) paycheck to paycheck,” Simmons told the Herald. “Holding that money, it’s burned some people.”

The Simmons still have not been paid $12,500 for their last month of managing the HAPO Center.

In May, they filed a $25,000 tort claim against the county, saying the failure to pay resulted in the county pulling the Simmons family and SVM into public politics and news media reports.

“This whole situation could have been avoided if the elected officials in the county didn’t play politics with hard working small businesses in the Tri-Cities,” Simmons wrote.

In Washington state, a tort claim , or claim for damages against the county, must be filed and rejected within 60 days before an actual lawsuit can be filed. There’s been no lawsuit to date.

Bad blood

The grudge against the Simmons seems to stem from a years-long dispute with former Commissioner Brad Peck, who recommended the company when the county was in dire straits.

During a March interview with investigators, Commissioner Mullen went on an unprompted rant about the Simmons, accusing Peck of somehow installing SVM to run the HAPO Center without his and Didier’s knowledge.

However, the three commissioners discussed giving SVM a temporary contract during a public meeting and they ultimately agreed to it.

The lingering bad blood was apparent in the secretly recorded meeting in which Mullen and Beaton are heard directing the county administrator to write a letter to sheriff’s investigators saying he had misunderstood the situation.

And Beaton has allegedly been pushing for an audit of SVM for undisclosed reasons since at least early January, according to the recordings and interviews with other county employees as part of the investigation.

Last month, Sheriff Jim Raymond posted on social media that an unnamed elected official was overheard making phone calls in the parking lot to have a former HAPO contractor audited.

His post was aimed at shedding light on a series of bizarre behaviors from elected officials, including some allegedly carrying guns inside the courthouse, searching offices for recording devices and changing locks without permission.

It’s unclear what Beaton was allegedly hoping to uncover. Beaton previously ran unsuccessfully to unseat Peck on the county commission.

Peck resigned at the end of 2023 , saying the board had “devolved into an arena of hyper-politization, cronyism, workplace bullying and personal acrimony.”

As recently as this month, Didier reiterated a claim that legal action should be taken against Peck over insurance conversion payments he doesn’t feel were appropriate. Peck, like many other county employees opted to take benefits in a VEBA account, which placed cash in an account for medical use, because he had better health benefits through his status as a retired Air Force officer.

The county is trying to eliminate the costly VEBA system. The state attorney general’s office has yet to make a determination on whether Peck taking the county’s benefits as offered was an issue.

Continuing relationship

It’s unclear if the Simmons plan to pursue the payment further with a lawsuit, but Kyle Simmons said they’re doing their best to continue the working relationship with the HAPO Center and Harris White Leasure.

“We care about the HAPO Center because we’ve been doing all the catering service there for six years and these customers are important to us,” Simmons said. “Not only are they customers at the HAPO Center, but they use us for other events too.”

He said they were disappointed to learn about the criminal investigation, but were committed to maintaining a good relationship with HWL and continuing to partner with them.

“We were just as shocked as everybody ...,” Simmons said. “We’ve never had enemies before so it’s kind of weird for our family to have enemies.”

Simmons said they still believe their choice to help the county was the right thing to do at that time for both their business and for clients who were facing the busiest season of the year at the event center with no management in place.

“I don’t think we have any regrets, obviously I wish the relationship with some county officials was better,” he said. “We don’t regret doing it, the HAPO Center has been a big part of our business. We want to continue as long as they’ll have us.“

Simmons said they don’t deal with the county or the commissioners much anymore, and he’s optimistic that they’ll continue to have a great working relationship with Harris White Leasure.