Pierce County officials spent over $3.3 million settling a variety of claims against the county, and it turns out the public was not informed of it. How does this kind of thing happen?

“There’s 187 separate claims associated with that number, and as most people know, local governments get sued with claims for damages — that’s a kind of a fact of life for governments,” Tacoma News Tribune reporter Sean Robinson told KTTH’s Jason Rantz. “A government lawsuit can be reasonable, like a road crew screws up the water pipe in front of your house and floods your basement.”

According to Robinson, most of the claims here are small and low-level, though some get into six figures, including one to settle a claim of gender discrimination by a sheriff’s deputy. In counties across Washington, usually there’s a protocol in which the city council discusses and votes on the settlement, disclosing the number and the parties.

“Pierce County is not doing any of that, not telling the public any of that. You would not know this big settlement was there unless you were looking really, really hard,” Robinson said. “Because on their agenda they just say, ‘we’re granting settlement authority on this numbered damage claims,’ with no names, no numbers, no nothing.”

Part of this may be the government protecting their negotiating positions so they don’t pay the max every time. Once negotiations are over, however, the public does need to be informed.

Pierce County used to have a risk management quarterly report, “but that report hasn’t been delivered since December of 2016, and the $3.3 million represents all the payouts between that period and now,” Robinson said. “That’s a big chunk of change.”

Robinson says the county was a little embarrassed to realize they weren’t doing those risk management reports.

“To me, they ought to take a vote on the big ones,” he said. “They have a threshold that if it’s under $250,000, then they’re not going to take a vote.”

“But if it’s a big one, take the vote. Because even though $250,000 might not be much in the context of government budgeting, it’s a lot to ordinary people.”

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