A former Benton County sheriff’s legacy continues to cost taxpayers three years after he was voted out of office .
The county is paying $45,000 to public records activist Eric Hood to end a lawsuit over some records related to a 2019 state audit.
That state audit found the sheriff’s office should have a system for tracking the 13,700 rounds of ammunition found at former Sheriff Jerry Hatcher’s home.
Hood accused the county of withholding several documents including emails between the former sheriff and employees about the ammunition, invoices and new policies mentioned in the audit.
Benton County did not admit in the agreement to making any mistakes, but the Aug. 27 settlement came after a Yakima County Superior Court judge ruled in June that the county didn’t provide all of the records.
The judge ordered Benton County to spend 60 days searching for more records than it originally turned over.
Hood, a Langley, Wash., public records advocate has been involved in more than 100 lawsuits across Washington.
Benton County attorneys tried to get the case dismissed by claiming that Hood is “well known for making such vacuous claims.”
“He is a vexatious requestor with several public records cases open throughout the state,” the county’s attorney wrote in a motion to get the case thrown out.
Hood responded by admitting that he’s made many requests, but they’ve been geared toward making sure governments uphold the state’s Public Records Act .
“(Public Records Act) compliance at many state and local agencies is simply terrible,” he wrote in a declaration to the judge. “Agencies all over this state have repeatedly failed to properly respond to a simple PRA request for records of a single recent audit.”
County Administrator Jerrod MacPherson declined recently to comment further on the settlement.
Training ammunition
Hood’s request was focused on a state audit that included a criticism of how the Benton Sheriff’s Office uses an inventory monitoring system to manage ammunition.
While a county-based software system manages pistols, rifles, safety equipment, cameras and radios, anyone could request “varying amounts” of ammunition for training or on duty.
The county didn’t have any paperwork showing how 13,700 rounds of ammunition ended up in Hatcher’s garage. Hatcher said he had the ammunition for practice.
Cases of ammunition were seized as part of a 2019 order in Hatcher’s divorce case when he was told to surrender all weapons, since his estranged wife had accused him of domestic violence.
Shipping labels on the boxes showed they were bought in 2015 and 2016 for the jail corrections division. At the time, Hatcher was the undersheriff and the sheriff’s office also managed the jail.
The stockpile became one of the eight charges against Hatcher that were used to oust him from office during a recall vote. He was accused of intimidating witnesses and public servants in investigations, retaliating against them, tampering with physical evidence and violating his oath of office.
After several years of legal battles, signature collecting and campaigning, the voters approved removing Hatcher from office in August 2021.
As part of its response to the state auditor’s finding in 2021, the county commissioners recommended the sheriff’s office track issuance of ammunition.
They also said they planned to implement a new financial management software system at the time and recommended the sheriff’s office use it to track ammunition.
Hatcher was still in charge of the sheriff’s office at the time of the audit and disagreed with the finding, claiming he’d already ordered officials to track the ammunition.
Public records request
After learning about the audit, Hood made a request in August 2021 for the ammunition tracking records from the county.
The county turned over 183 pages to Hood by March 2022 but Hood noted several documents were mentioned in those records that were not included in the documents handed over.
The county hadn’t turned over any documents about the new software and policies that they were putting in place. It also didn’t include the sheriff’s 2020 policy that was mentioned in the response to the finding.
“I found no emails from Sheriff Jerry Hatcher to county employees (including commissioners) related to the finding or its resolution,” Hood said in court documents.
There was only one email from the sheriff to county employees which “only indirectly related to the finding,” Hood wrote.
He also believed there should be invoices for the $130,000 auditing costs that were supposed to be turned over, as well as an audit survey.
He sued the county a year later in March 2023.
The county responded by trying to get the lawsuit thrown out by claiming Hood was not making the request in good faith and also arguing later to the Yakima County judge that it believed it had supplied all the documents that were requested.
The judge disagreed and said there were likely more documents. After that, the county agreed to settle the suit rather than face stiffer fines for being found in violation of the state public records law.
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